With the race to establishing an enterprise as a ‘mobile’ one gaining momentum, a lot of organizations are making the mistake of going the ‘me too’ route. This is a major reason for a lot of heartburn and monetary losses
With the race to establishing an enterprise as a ‘mobile’ one gaining momentum,
a lot of organizations are making the mistake of going the ‘me too’ route. This is a major reason for a lot of heartburn and monetary losses. It is well understood that mobility has many benefits in terms of top-line, bottom-line, and customer / employee satisfaction gains. The complexity that mobile initiatives bring in is far outweighed by its many benefits. While these facts make large companies pursue the dream of going mobile, it is their approach that is not allowing them to realize it.
It is not one size fits all
The biggest mistake made by the organizations is to rely on the success of others and assume that their experiences will be similar. It is very common to hear a CIO or a CTO say that the CEO wants them to mobilify because one of his peers gave him a spiel about how his organization benefited millions by embracing the M-way. Every individual with a good idea does not become Steve Jobs. Every astronaut does not live the Neil Armstrong.
Fait accompli
Another important factor while deciding on your mobilization moves is to understand that it is no longer a choice. The genie is out of the bottle, and there is no putting it back in. There is no point closing your eyes to the reality and thinking this is a topic for discussion in next years board meeting. The M-word is a part of the business today, whether you like it or not. It is no longer a competitive advantage. It is something you need to survive in the modern business landscape.
Strategy, not tactic does it
Now that you have established that you can’t shy away from mobility, you need to address its inception into your organization. Simply aping another organization that was propelled by it to the galaxy of success might not even get you as far as the moon. So what should you do?
You can either sit back and let the customers and employees own the way your organization uses smart devices, or you can firefight your way out of the complex challenges presented by the uncontrolled growth of mobility in your system. The right way however, is to build and execute a good strategy. Get your A-team together, use the collective intelligence of all the stakeholders (leadership, IT, marketing, sales, HR, legal, employees and customers) to define a concrete strategy, and execute it. But wait. It does not end there. The arena is evolving very fast. You need to set short term goals, and have periodic reviews to see if the expectations and the outcomes match. If not, you have to be open-minded, and relook at the strategy to change it if required.
Another important aspect of mobility is the policies governing the users behavior, both internal and external. The M-world presents its own challenges in terms of security and vulnerability. While the ITSec teams grapple to plug the holes or worse, find them, the users must contribute to the efforts of managing the environment through good behavior. However, it is the responsibility of the IT team to tell them what to do and what not to do.
It is very important for an organization to address the issue of mobility with strategic rigor rather than a tactical approach if they want to succeed.
