To address the business challenges of productivity, profitability and competitive advantage, enterprises are increasingly looking to redefine their mobile strategies, and pursue the benefits offered by multiple mobile applications. With developments in technology, costs and user experience, the mobilisation of individuals and business processes has given enterprises fresh impetus to explore vertical mobile applications.
Intelligent network coverage, declining transmission costs, and a far greater familiarity with and demand from users for mobile applications (e.g. email) or smartphones have driven enterprises to review their mobile strategies. Horizontal applications such as sales and field force automation or supply chain management solutions have been at the forefront of single, point-to-point mobile applications, and BlackBerry’s email solution has maintained a dominant share of the overall market for mobile enterprise applications.
The change that is now happening is driven by innovative enterprises exploring their specific business processes, operational inefficiencies and requirements. The manufacturing sector is a good example. Faced with market trends of greater globalisation, shrinking product development cycles and an increase in demand for higher-quality goods and service, manufacturers have had to focus on productivity, profitability, product and service innovation, as well as optimising information efficiency.
For manufacturers, information efficiency can now provide a real competitive advantage. For example, real-time flows of information made possible by mobile applications have greatly enhanced manufacturers’ ability to provide immediate and accurate inventory information, automate order management routines, and schedule the delivery and dispatch of goods. Furthermore, examples of voice-based warehouse picking solutions provide manufacturing enterprises with substantial benefits in terms of employee productivity and safety.
The advantages of deploying such mobile applications include enhancing productivity, reducing costs (by minimising tied capital in stock and improving asset utilisation), and accessing real-time information. However, research by Analysys Mason has shown that there are definite challenges for enterprises in pursuing this type of mobile strategy. As illustrated in Figure 1, the most significant challenges are related to cost, security, employee skills and implementation concerns.
Figure 1: Main barriers to adoption of mobile enterprise applications by enterprises in four industry sectors [Source: Analysys Mason, 2008]
In addressing these concerns, operators should support enterprises to explore not only the application requirements of their employees and business processes but also the deployment options and solutions available to them.
Whilst enterprises will look to minimise deployment disruptions, address security issues and fully leverage the technical capabilities of mobile devices, operators should be prepared to provide end-to-end managed services to underpin these mobility strategies, and deliver intelligent mobility applications and supporting platforms that will allow enterprises to find a cost-effective way to deploy and manage applications addressing specific operational or business challenges.
Operators such as Vodafone and AT&T have started to address the requirements of enterprises by introducing a range of mobile enterprise solutions. With the continued search for incremental revenues, enterprises can expect to see an increasing number of communications providers entering this market. The key requirements for operators will be to:
- develop end-to-end managed services that provide a compelling and quantifiable return on investment for the enterprise, with flexible application and deployment options to meet customers’ requirements
- provide robust technical and end-user support
- offer flexible pricing plans
- form partnerships with the right mix of mobility applications partners.
With extensive strategy and implementation experience in enterprise mobility, Analysys Mason is uniquely positioned to assist both operators who wish to develop their mobility application portfolios and platform capabilities and enterprises who wish to define and execute their mobile strategies.