Challenges for enterprises in implementing mobility

Enterprise mobility has proved to be an opportunity for organisational transformation. Anytime, anywhere access to information and realisation of business benefits like better customer service, employee satisfaction, new business opportunities and reduced operating cost are crucial drivers to implementing enterprise mobility across industry verticals. In spite of the clear benefits offered by mobility, enterprise mobility has not really taken off in 2012. Challenges in terms of application development, privacy and data security are creating big dilemmas for the CIO/IT team who prefer to adopt a wait and watch approach towards implementation of enterprise mobility.   

However, not developing an enterprise mobility strategy will no longer remain an option for CIOs in the times to come. The rapid proliferation of high end mobile devices at lower costs is leading to a growing clamour within the organisation to use their own devices for enterprise communication as opposed to older non portable systems.

As long as a few points are taken care of while planning the approach to enterprise mobility, it should be possible for the enterprise to significantly decrease the risk of mobile implementation. Listed below are a few important factors that enterprises should consider while deciding the approach towards enterprise mobility:

Point solution or platform-based
Point solutions are standard solutions that cater to a specific need or those solutions that extend mobility to an existing non-mobile interface. Platform-based applications are characterised by a single platform that integrates with multiple back-end systems. The platform provides the enterprise with standard functionalities like user experience, security, reporting and are more relevant to enterprises with a clear mobility road map.

Device selection
With buy your own device (BYOD) so much in the news, there is already a lot of discussion on this aspect. Enterprises need to decide the platform based on factors like size, scalability, ruggedness, availability of features like RFID, camera, GPS, bar code scanners etc.

Poor network coverage
Despite the growing availability of coverage across multiple technologies (4G, WiFi) and decreasing cost, it is advisable to consider that there will be gaps in coverage. Hence, offline mode of operation is one aspect that should be built in the application

Security
Providing data access outside the enterprise walls have always been the nightmare for the IT team. Moreover, one should also consider actual device theft and hence ensure that there is no confidential data on the device or that it should be appropriately encrypted based on the significance of the data.

Mobile application management
One should factor potential problem issues like remotely updating/deleting applications or data associated with the applications, ensuring that applications stay in sync with operating systems upgrades or back-end changes. This point normally enhances the return on investment of the mobile application from a long term perspective.

Reporting
Monitoring usage characteristics in terms of time spent on each page, top activities by device classes/ user base helps in improving user experience and thus ensuring greater adoption of mobile applications.

In summation, enterprises should ensure that they have a long term mobile strategy as well as an implementation plan to achieve it. Enterprises should consider their existing IT infrastructure and internal capabilities while developing this plan. Investing in master data management, cloud and technologies like HTML5 would significantly reduce the risk in implementing a new system. Enterprises need to realise that it is impossible to build the perfect mobile solution from the start; what is required is to address the challenges posed by the ecosystem in a systematic manner so as to minimise risk.

Nester Dias is co-founder, Mobileware Technologies, a leading mobile software company