Mobility is one of the ‘third platform’ technologies that we believe will create differentiation for future businesses. In a challenging environment, where competition is peaking, businesses are required to be constantly on the go, a requirement that is made possible by the use of enterprise mobility solutions that serve a variety of purposes.
From the internal usage of mobility solutions — such as those for sales and HR processing, mobilization of sales and marketing teams, and finance approvals — to external client usage for faster sales completion cycles and the facilitation of self-provisioning services, the penetration and usage of mobility solutions across organizations in the UAE has increased rapidly over recent years.
There is a growing awareness among organizations of the immense power that mobility solutions can bring in terms of growing the business. As such, the adoption of mobility has grown from the initial days of content sharing to include solutions that allow two-way interaction and the self-provisioning of services. The demand for mobility from organizations has become much more complex, with requirements for the solutions to interact with backend IT systems (ERP, CRM, etc.) and also connect to third-party organizations, such as banks in some cases, enabling them to provide self-provisioning services to their customers.
These mobility solutions therefore require complex integration within the enterprise, as well as embedded security features that ensure the client receives a secure gateway through which it can interact over the Web. It goes without saying that developing such advanced mobility solutions requires a sophisticated skill set, and the added features are making these solutions heavy on the mobile devices they sit on.
Currently, the demand for mobility solutions is being driven by business needs. Different functional departments within organizations — such as human resource, finance, sales, and marketing – are contacting their internal IT departments to develop mobility solutions that will automate their processes and enable their customers and field-based employees to access various business functions. Given this demand, many large organizations in the UAE are utilizing the capabilities of their in-house application development teams to develop mobility solutions for their organizations.
However, with the growing complexity of mobility solutions, enterprises are increasingly considering the possibility of engaging third-party developers to develop mobile applications that span their business processes. Such engagements will help organizations implement best-of-breed mobility solutions that are robust and customized to meet their unique business requirements.
Transitioning from the use of internal development skills to expert mobility solutions developers will hit IT budgets hard. Many organizations currently fail to understand the additional costs associated with hosting and managing mobility solutions that go hand in hand with application development. The third-party developer usually favors development of a mobility solution for all mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, and BlackBerry, thereby not restricting usage of the mobility solution to a particular mobile platform user community. In addition, the third-party developers also engage in comprehensive testing of the mobility solutions they develop, a critical and costly process that is sometimes overlooked when an application is developed in-house.
The third-party developer at times also conducts comprehensive user-demographic segmentation for the usage of the mobility solution, and creates an interface that improves the user experience. All these factors cumulatively raise the cost of external mobility application development. But organizations will have to gradually leverage the capabilities of third-party developers if they want their mobility solutions to be robust, more user friendly, and, most importantly, much more widely used.
In order to secure adequate funding to develop mobility solutions for their respective organizations, in-house IT departments will have to build a case based either on revenue/business generation or cost savings. Mobility solutions can help customers pay their monthly bills, make new purchases, enquire about new or existing products, file complaints, and follow up on existing enquiries, all without having to visit any of the organization’s shops or engaging their call centers. This will eventually shift the channel through which an organization serves its customers from its stores and call centers to mobile devices, thereby reducing the level of human interface required and enabling services to be delivered in a much faster and more cost-effective fashion.
When it comes to the internal usage of mobility solutions, field-based employees will be able to process information in real time and provide faster inputs to their office-based colleagues. This paperless approach not only reduces the time spent by field-based employees traveling to and from their physical office locations, but also speeds up the time it takes to address various business scenarios. Thus, in addition to saving time, it leads to faster processing capabilities, and if this relates to customer queries, it will inevitably result in a more satisfied customer.
It is clear, therefore, that building a case based on return on investment (ROI), by linking the implementation of mobility solutions to real business objectives, will play a key role in helping IT departments secure the required budget to engage third-party developers capable of building robust mobility solutions for their organizations.
The columnist is group vice president and regional managing director for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey at global ICT market intelligence and advisory firm International Data Corporation (IDC).
