Managers wonder — do mobile devices such as PDAs and cell phones make companies more competitive? The answer is yes, according to IDC, the international market analysis firm. In a recent conversation with Sun, IDC mobility experts Stephen Drake and Sean Ryan explained how mobile devices are adding significant value to the enterprise.
Q: How do mobile devices make organizations more competitive?
Ryan: The main benefit of any mobile device can be found in increased accessibility and responsiveness to colleagues, customers, and partners. All of this translates into doing business faster and more efficiently.
Drake: Many corporations are moving toward converged devices, or smartphones, which combine cell phone and PDA features. It makes a lot of financial sense to use a single device for both phone calls and applications such as calendars and corporate email.
Q: Does increased accessibility and responsiveness make people more productive?
Drake: Yes, particularly for people who travel a great deal. During meeting breaks or downtime in the airport, you can catch up with email, which is the most pervasive non-voice application on converged mobile devices. By the time the day is over, you don't have to fire up the laptop to catch up on work.
Sean Ryan
Ryan: From an organizational perspective, there are tremendous new opportunities to be more efficient and have better customer touch with mobile devices. Take the example of a cable or telecom person in the field. With some of the mobile GPS and Wi-Fi applications now available, these workers can be routed based on location, expertise, availability, and customer status.
Q: Have mobile devices created unrealistic accessibility expectations?
Drake: There are two sides to the accessibility coin. Mobile devices give people a lot more flexibility to do things in their personal lives, like go to their children's soccer games. On the flip side, if you're easily accessible, you don't have an excuse for not taking care of important information that shows up on Friday night. But most people believe that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, particularly when they benefit from the advances in customer service Sean just mentioned.
Q: Are there situations where these devices make people less productive?
Drake: When any technology is implemented poorly, it will produce poor results. Insisting on difficult-to-remember passwords or choosing excessively complicated applications are good ways to make a mobile implementation fail. Increasing productivity with mobile devices requires explaining the benefits to employees — and making sure applications chosen take into account the business processes used by workers to create a strong end-user experience.
Q: How many mobile devices are currently in use?
Ryan: We estimate that vendors will ship over 13 million converged mobile devices (smartphones, PDA-style phones, BlackBerry devices) to both enterprise and individual users in the United States for 2007. This accounts for about one out of every 10 mobile phone shipments in the United States for the same period. The worldwide breakout is similar, with 108 million converged mobile devices expected to be shipped to both individuals and enterprises.
Support services can cost businesses significant amounts of money, but training employees can take the sting out of these expenses.
Q: Beyond purchase price, what other costs do mobile devices carry?
Drake: Support services can cost businesses significant amounts of money, but training employees can take the sting out of these expenses. Other expenses include the incremental cost of deploying a mobile solution, purchasing newer devices, and implementing mobile applications appropriate for a particular workforce. Security and replacement are two closely related costs to consider as well. Because mobile devices are so small, they are more prone to being lost or stolen than other kinds of hardware. Fortunately, features like authentication, encryption, device-wide lock-down capabilities, and password protection are becoming standard features.
Q: What kind of infrastructure is required to support a mobile workforce?
Drake: Extending business applications to mobile devices is increasingly important for competitive enterprises, and this requires solutions from mobile-specific suppliers. After installation, business applications always are in need of maintenance, management and security, so a company going this route will need to consider these functions at the point of deployment. Keep in mind, though, that this doesn't mean extending individual applications down to the mobile device, but rather bringing down a subset of components from multiple back ends to create user-friendly mobile applications.
Q: What are some of the features of a good enterprise mobile plan?
Ryan: You need to be able to manage costs and control standards. We see enterprise mobile plans that address these issues with optimization alerts, and pooled access to applications and voice services. Other features to consider include built-in security, service quality, and replacement policies. Price is always a consideration, and the good news here is that component and manufacturing costs are going down, so low-end devices are getting cheaper. But when you add things like more connectivity, increased battery life, and more applications, you pay a premium.
Q: Who typically pays for these devices? The employer or the employee?
Converged mobile devices will become highly integrated with enterprise voice and data networks.
Drake: We see both payment models, but employer purchases often result in more control and security. This will become increasingly important as mobile devices become embedded within corporate networks. However, on a worldwide basis, the majority of converged mobile devices are still purchased by the individual. Suppliers and organizations alike need to consider the impact this has and how they can provide solutions that take it into consideration.
Q: How will mobile devices change the enterprise in the future?
Ryan: Converged mobile devices will become highly integrated with enterprise voice and data networks. This will necessitate greater involvement from IT departments, but will bring productivity gains to the subset of mobile workers within the enterprise that conduct business out of the office and require access to corporate data. Many organizations will also likely grant limited access to corporate e-mail on approved device platforms in situations where employees purchase their own converged mobile devices. IT departments will have to manage these users, as well ensure security and mitigate corporate liability.
About IDC, Stephen Drake, and Sean Ryan
IDC is a global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. Stephen Drake is the program director for IDC's Mobile Enterprise programs. Sean Ryan is a worldwide research analyst within IDC's Mobile Enterprise group.
