Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
It’s a delicate (some might say indelicate) question to ask – What is your mobile strategy? But I’ve learned not to make assumptions when companies come to us looking for help with their mobility issues.
They know they have to do something and they have a pretty good idea of what they want, but how to get there and how to start the process is usually less clear to them. Of course, there are a select few companies that have a concise, well-laid out plan for mobility and know how to leverage it effectively.
Others are struggling. They’re not in the business of mobility, so they are looking for ways to react to the dynamic of the market while still doing what they do best, which is usually manufacturing, selling, and distributing their products. Some may have started by developing a few apps or upgrading security safeguards.
But it’s no longer about tackling a particular pain point or a very specific need. That’s not enough. They need to embrace an overarching mobile strategy, a framework that can handle the constant and continual change that is today’s normal mobility standard.
The first rule to observe when setting up a mobile strategy is to get representatives from all the stakeholder groups – end users, marketing, sales, IT, business owners and others – involved as active team members. It is equally important that all stakeholders agree on a unified vision for the organization, especially when it comes to business and technology requirements, anticipated efficiencies, project goals and possible process changes. Once you’ve assembled this dream team spend some time working on these five criteria:
· Policy: Establish a rulebook that sets up long-term goals and short-term objectives.
—Objectives: Who is the target audience? What are the business objectives? What is the operational alignment?
—Processes: What needs to change to achieve the organizational objectives and how will the changes impact business goals?
—Technology: Develop an integrated approach for software, hardware, and communication that takes into account the constant changes in both market and business needs.
—Management tools: There are tools to cover multiple management aspects and selecting the proper ones can ease integration, cut costs, and promote customer satisfaction.
It is critical that companies establish a mobile strategy that satisfies today’s business requirements and is flexible enough to evolve and adapt to technologies of the future that promise to be even more powerful and pervasive.
Fernando Alvarez leads Capgemini’s recently launched Mobile Solutions Global Service Line.
