Ready or not, mobile enablement is transforming the business world. The combination of powerful devices, near-ubiquitous wireless networks, and more widespread consumer adoption is affecting almost all business operations and changing the way IT operates for good.
If your enterprise is just starting out on the mobile journey, the good news is you’re not alone. The sooner you take your next steps further into the mobile world, the sooner your entire enterprise can reap the rewards of real-time mobile efficiency.
To help, we’ve created an interactive guide that helps you pinpoint where you are on your mobile journey and provides you with actionable,
practical tips for optimizing your current investment, along with guidelines on how to move to the next level. You can check it out here. Step #1: Look Beyond Email
Your workforce has grown accustomed to the supreme functionality and user-friendliness of their personal devices, and they now expect a similar experience in the office. In fact, 75% of employees in high-growth markets are bringing their own mobile devices for use at work.
Many CIOs have responded to this movement by creating the policies and deploying the tools to enable “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) programs. Yet, according to Lopez Research LLC, more than two-thirds of organizations admit they still only enable mobile access to e-mail, contact, and calendar applications. With all of the new mobile technology available, that’s like driving on the Autobahn in an electric car. It’s not enough to create sustainable business value. To gain a true advantage, you need to dive even further into mobile technology and seek out even more mobile versions of existing applications or adapt these applications to operate on mobile devices.
Step #2: Define Your Mobile Strategy
Without a clearly defined mobile strategy, your enterprise could find itself going in too many directions all at once. Instead, create a plan that can ensure effective execution now and in the future, so mobile adoption becomes an integral part of business and IT strategies. To do so, make sure your mobile enterprise plan includes these three components:
- Define mobile beneficiaries – Define what business benefits you want to achieve with mobile-enabling employee workflows and which
workflows deliver both employee and business benefits. - Start small, but execute against a plan – Define several “quick win” workflows within an overall app transition plan that can be deployed and changed quickly if necessary.
- Build a mobile management strategy – Design a management strategy that secures corporate data, allows employees to partake
in BYOD, and facilitates the distribution and management of apps and content.
Step #3: Move into a Wider World of Opportunity
Even if you start off with simple applications, such as a mobile-based sales catalog or mobile HR requests, the benefits can be powerful – with time and money saved across your entire enterprise. By enabling quicker and easier access to data for your employees, you are setting new possibilities in motion for your business.
Look Forward to the Road Ahead
Once you have taken these first steps on your enterprise mobile journey, the next phase is to move beyond efficiency models and improve the way work is accomplished through mobile-enabled real-time access to data. No matter where you are on your mobile adoption path, it’s easier to take the next steps if you have a map to guide you. Access our interactive guide to enterprise mobility, Destination: Possibility, from SAP that gives you action-oriented direction on extending your existing processes and discovering the unlimited potential mobile can bring to your business.