I have been very busy these last few months with projects involving the use of “mobile” technology and strategies. Organizations and companies have started looking at their existing tools, technologies and strategies and realizing they have to look at paradigm changes and technology shifts as they occur or become outdated.
Either we manage our corporate technologies, or they manage us. Previously, we were only required to manage the technologies within our walls—technologies that were owned by our organization. All that is changing.
Take, for example, mobile technologies. A mobile strategy used to be a “nice to have.” Today, most technology leaders will tell you that it is an essential tool for your future success. While at first glance it may appear to you that you don’t really need a mobile strategy. Here are some recent findings that suggest otherwise:
- IDC estimates that in 2012 686M smart phones will be shipped and by 2015, smartphone sales will reach $982M—your clients, prospects, and employees are using smart phones to do more things than every before
- Morgan Stanley expects that by 2014, mobile “web users” will surpass desktop users
- The NPD Group says that tablet growth will surpass notebook growth by 2016. This level of penetration throughout society has been achieved quicker than even electricity
Mobile workers in your company and your client organizations expect to be able to do email, calendar, IM, access files and applications, edit documents, and print. And many of them expect to be able to do this on their own devices. For example, Juniper Research estimates that the current total of 150M employee-owned devices now being used in workplaces will balloon to 350M by 2014.
This has serious repercussions for technology managers. We will need to be able to deploy the apps your workers need and protect your corporate data on these devices. The challenge for most of our organizations, and for technology managers specifically, will be to enable employees to use their own devices, but on your terms.
Moving into 2013 – technology managers, IT leaders, and business unit leaders must collaborate to determine how much “mobile” their organization needs, and how to enable it. A tool/method introduced to me by a consulting firm, called Performance DNA , assisted me in many projects to help our client organizations identify the outcomes they must deliver, opportunities to use mobile technologies either to replace or support desktop applications, and the best ways to achieve success. The resulting mobile technology roadmap provides answers to the “what,” “when,” and “how” questions surrounding the introduction and appropriate application of mobile technology.
How do you determine your mobile strategy? What techniques have worked for you?
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