Mobility has become a cornerstone of today’s business environment, with clients, employees and suppliers needing real time access to information wherever they may be. In fact, according to Fliplet, enterprise apps boost productivity by more than 34%, and companies can gain 240 work hours per year due to mobility.
However, mobility does not come without its challenges, with 45% of IT departments failing to meet business expectations when it comes to apps. This could be due to insufficient apps delivered, quality, business impact, time or budget.
In order to ensure maximum ROI and effectiveness, the challenges that come with mobility have to be understood and overcome. Here are the key challenges to achieving enterprise mobility:
Cross-Platform Support
Sending information and updates across the variety of platforms out there can be a big challenge for many mobility initiatives. You have iOS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, and others, across both smartphones and tablets. This is of course counteracted when companies issue a handful of dedicated devices which are fully supported by the IT department, but that still leaves you with the fact that employees use over 3 devices daily for work related activities, according to Citrix.
Security
Security is a main issue for CIOs because personnel will access the corporate systems at a variety of offsite locations and through many different devices. There is also the statistic which states that since 2014, there is a 75% year-over-year increase in US mobile malware rates. The solution, according to Jason Tooley, the UK country manager at Citrix, is:
“With a multitude of different workers, all potentially using different devices, focusing on managing apps, rather than devices, can tackle this potentially complex environment. A good mobile application management (MAM) solution offers flexibility – allowing IT to apply different policies for different apps, user types and mobility scenarios. More importantly however it offers a level of security for organisations while empowering workers to get the most out of their device of choice.”
Costs
One of the main challenges and barriers to entry for mobilization is the large price tag. Even with BYOD solutions, the budget still has to cover integration costs, development costs, telecom costs and many others. This places a lot of pressure on CIOs to manage and lower the price of mobilization.
Integration with Current Enterprise Systems
The task of integrating new mobile apps and technologies into the existing infrastructure can be both expensive and time consuming. It is a process that usually ties up a big part of the IT personnel for a considerable amount of time. Mobility also opens up the system to off-hours use, which ultimately places strain on the IT department’s resources.
Maintaining Control Over the Mobile Environment
While BYOD solutions can provide cost benefits, they can also bring an increased security and productivity risk. It’s important for any organization considering mobilization to have contingencies and rules in place for the use of mobile devices within the enterprise domain.
Preventing Personal Use of Proprietary Mobile Devices
On the other hand, if you choose to invest in mobile devices for your employees, you have to minimize the impact of personal use. Considering that mobility means that your employees will be offsite often, the potential for personal use increases, with around 61% of workers reporting that they work outside of the office at least part of the time.
Training the Employees
Depending on the scope of the mobilization effort, you might have different versions for multiple applications across several devices, each with its own set of functionalities. This brings to the forefront the need for training your workforce, which in turn can result in a considerable overhead for the organization. Training is especially important when you consider this statistic from Boston Technology: nearly 80% of enterprise apps are only used once.
Scaling Up
Once the system is up and running, and the workforce is fully mobile, there are still challenges to tackle. For one, scaling up when new employees come on board can strain the network bandwidth, which will impact performance. There’s also the uncomfortable statistic from Kensington which states that 4.3% of company-issued smartphones are stolen or lost every year. This is another overhead that needs to be taken into account.
Conclusion
While many of these challenges might seem daunting, there are definitely solutions and workarounds. And, while the costs of mobilization run high, a well-thought out and executed mobilization effort can offset the price tag and bring a considerable boost in productivity, efficiency and ultimately revenue.
About Finoit Technologies
Finoit Technologies is an IT company providing Web and Mobile application development services, and have worked on over 500 Web projects and over 200 iOS and Android apps from scratch.
