Mobile Strategy

The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise

Mobile Strategy

A recently published survey by Accenture of over 400 global executives reveals that:
73% agree that mobility will impact their businesses as much as or more than the web
did in the 1990s.
One-third of the participating executives cited mobility as one of their top two priorities,
while 75% put it among their top five.
59% say that their company has implemented a centralized company-wide strategy,
while 58% say that their mobile strategy is moderately developed.

Mobility has become very big. It has transformed how businesses interact with customers and is now
disrupting the way people, processes and the technology infrastructure interact within the ecosystem.
What is really compelling though, is the speed and scale at which mobility is being adopted and its
emergence as a key strategic initiative. Businesses, at whichever adoption stage they are at, know that
there is massive potential with mobility ready to exploit. But, they need a clear mobile strategy that can
provide solutions that best fit their needs and that can help them realize their business goals, transforming
them into a lean, agile and proactive digital enterprise.
Our cover story, this time, discusses the need, key elements and major challenges in designing and
implementing a long-term, sustainable mobile strategy.

What is a mobile strategy?

A mobile strategy is a framework that encompasses business, technology, projects, people and processes
into one unified sphere. It integrates mobility as a technology with the rest of the ecosystem to allow
organizations to define and practice its mobile engagement. A mobile strategy aligns mobility efforts
with business goals, lays out a roadmap for its successful implementation, enables achieving near and
long-term goals, provides policies and best practices for governance and helps in accurately measuring
its success. Moreover, it also gives you flexibility to tap future technological advancements and adjust your
strategy in accordance with the shifts in the business environment.

Mobile Strategy: The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy / 2

The need for a mobile strategy

Developing an Enterprise-Wide Mobile Strategy

8%

Very Challenging
Somewhat Challenging
Not Challenging

50%

42%

Source: Netcentric Strategies LLC

As per a survey by Netcentric strategies LLC, around 92% of participants find developing an enterprisewide mobility strategy very challenging to somewhat challenging. Why is this so? Most organizations
consider mobility solutions as an extension of their IT infrastructure. Moreover, we also see many adopting
a need-basis approach rather than a holistic approach with a well-defined strategy. The lack of mobile
strategy, ultimately, limits their ability to realize the full potential from their investments in mobile devices
and apps. Lack of a robust mobility strategy can lead to poor adoption rates, lower engagement, higher
hidden costs and failure to achieve a desirable ROI. Whereas, creating and executing a mobile strategy
offers numerous benefits, such as:
Leveraging your existing enterprise technology like ERP, CRM, etc., and integrating the existing IT
infrastructure to derive optimum results
Improving adoption rates by focusing on user-centricity
Enabling enterprise-wide adoption--connecting people, products and processes
Maximizing productivity by speeding up responsiveness to employee needs and process
requirements
Making the organization more agile and responsive to customer needs and, thereby, boosting
brand perception
Maximizing results and returns from investments on mobility solutions by widening its scope
and coverage
Allowing businesses to create sustainable and clear policies for mobile engagement
Mobile Strategy: The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy / 3

 Bringing dexterity into the ecosystem to absorb dynamic shifts in the business environment

Business Impact/Number of Mobile Apps

Enterprise Mobility Adoption Stages

Purchase Mobile Devices:

- Mobile acess to existing
apps
- No mobile app
development
- Result: Poor user
experience(UX) and
negligible productivity, CRM
or revenue gains

Stage 1

Mobility Centric Innovation:

- Develop completely new
apps that leverage mobility
Mobilize Existing Applicaions: benefits
- Develop new graphical user - Result: User-centered UX
interfaces (GUI) on top of
and new productivity,CRM
existing business logic
and revenue oppurtunities
- Result: Acceptable UX and
noticeable productivity, CRM
and revenue gains

Stage 2

Stage 3
Source: Deloitte

The need for a mobile strategy is required when businesses transition from stage 2 to stage 3.

Mobile Strategy: The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy / 4

Key aspects of a mobile strategy

The process of creating a holistic mobility strategy for your business will involve five key aspects: Objectives,
Users, Technology, Governance and Measurement.

Governance

Enterprise
Mobility
Strategy

Objectives

Management

Users

Technology

Objectives: It is important to define from the very beginning the objectives, both short-term and
long-term, for adopting mobility in your enterprise. Every objective should be laid out in as much
detail as possible. Some of the popular objectives behind adopting mobility are boosting productivity,
reducing response-time, faster resolution to customer complaints and cost-efficiency, etc.
Users: Businesses need to identify the target groups for mobility implementation. Who are your
users? Customers or employees? What are their expectations? What are their training requirements?
How will you integrate mobile technology with your existing processes to meet the expectations of
the target group?
Technology: The trickiest part to enabling mobility is to select appropriate and accurate
technology architecture. The challenge is to create a technology plan that not only serves your
present requirements but that will also potentially evolve for tomorrow. What is your device policy?
What about your UX/UI design policies? What are your backend requirements? How can your existing

Mobile Strategy: The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy / 5

technology be leveraged? And most importantly, how do you robustly secure the newly built system?
Governance: The governance or management policy can be the difference between a failed and
a successful mobile implementation. Therefore, it is important to clearly spell out the management
policies and procedures, ranging from devices to application building and usage rules, to be followed
in the new mobile regime. Which devices will be allowed? How will access to sensitive data will be
controlled and monitored? What is your app development approach?
Measurement: A good strategy should provide you with the right tools and metrics to evaluate
or assess its deliverables. How much money have you been able to save after your mobile initiative?
Which channels are adding to profits? What is the customer satisfaction level? How much additional
work-time your employees are getting?
Each aspect when considered separately will require you to answer many questions. Each answer will
inform the next step towards a holistic mobile strategy.

Steps towards a mobile strategy

Define
Business
Goals

Prepare
Mobility
Roadmap

User
Workflow
Analysis

Prepare
Technology
Blueprint

Do
Test
Deployment

Build
CoE

Prepare
Implementation
Roadmap

Set
Budget

Review

Define business goals. State the purpose of enabling mobility in your enterprise. What are your
high-priority business goals? What type of apps will help you reach those goals? Look outside as well
as within your organization to identify opportunities for mobile.
Prepare mobility roadmap. Once you have a set of business goals that you wish to achieve
through mobility, the next step is to find desired mobile devices and apps that will help you reach
those goals. For each mobile solution, you need to build a case summary that lists key benefits,
Mobile Strategy: The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy / 6

functions, target users and target beneficiaries, etc. Prioritizing these mobile solutions based on your
set business goals will evolve into a mobility roadmap.
Do user workflow analysis. Any mobility solution will replace an existing workflow process.
Therefore, it is important to do a comprehensive analysis of the existing process before it is mobilized.
This will not only help you improve the existing process but will also help you measure the impact of
mobilizing the particular process and justify the costs.

Costs Category Comparisons Across Blackberry Maturity Stages

Mobile Platform/Device/OS selection

MDM or MEAP? Smartphones or Tablets? Company sponsored or BYOD? iOS or Android or

BlackBerry or All?

System Integration

How will mobile apps overlap or be distinct from existing channels? How will it connect with
the back-end?

Mobile App Development

Full client, rich client or thin client? In-house or outsourced development? Native, HTML5 or
Hybrid? UI and UX specifications, etc.

Security Policy

What are your policies and procedures for securing mobile applications, user authentication,
data protection and server applications?

Supported Devices

What are your supported devices? Can you create a charter for handling supported devices and
future devices?

Wireless Connectivity

Do you have access to steady, high-speed connectivity for all users and security for your
wireless networks?

Prepare a technology blueprint. Designing a technology blueprint has several facets, including
deciding on a mobile platform, OS and device selection, device procurement strategy--company
sponsored or BYOD,--core mobility architecture, mobile app development strategy, security policy,
app and device management strategy and wireless connectivity requirements, etc.
Set out a budget for mobility. Many organizations make the mistake of combining a mobile
budget with IT, which often results in confusion and at times pushes mobile investments down the
priority ladder. You need to create a separate budget for your mobility efforts. What are you planning
to invest today, in the next six months and in the next few years? Breaking up the budget for processes,
departments, etc., will enable you to build an accurate ROI model.
Draw an implementation roadmap. The mobile implementation roadmap will allow you to
assess the current state of mobility in the organization, to compare it against the business goals, and
to set up the timeframe and work process to realize it. Since an implementation roadmap requires the
identification of risks and dependencies and the entry and exit criteria of each mobile project to be
well defined, it can help you to monitor and manage each project effectively to achieve the overall
strategic goals on time.
Build a center of excellence. Mobility serves the requirements of various stakeholders of the
system. To accomplish this, build a Center of Excellence with people from diverse domains and
expertise to unify and centralize the many voices. . The COE will institutionalize best practices for
mobility, bring consistency into the integration process, define policy and procedures for use and
access of mobile solutions and look for opportunities for further adoption of mobile initiatives, etc.
Do test deployment. Pick a particular process or mobile opportunity to test your mobility plan.
Implement it and see how it turns out. Analyze and document the deployment to understand success
Mobile Strategy: The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy / 7

and failure points. Fine-tune your mobile strategy based on the test deployment experiences. Then,
expand it to an organization-wide rollout.
Monitor, evaluate and review. It is important to constantly monitor and assess your strategy
based on the feedback collected from various sources. Any deviation has to be immediately corrected.
There should be a calendar for the review process for each element of your mobile environment.

Experts Speak
For businesses which are exploring mobility for the first time with their employees, start by building something
which may not be mission critical, but is fun. For example, providing employees with an app that allows them
to order food from the cafeteria.
Cimarron Buser, VP of Business Development at Apperian
The focus for businesses should be on questions such as whether the apps will be for internal or external use,
and what platforms theyll be using it on. Remember that when youre building an app, people will actually
have to use it,
Ken Daniels, Senior Director for Strategic Alliances in Enterprise Mobility at Samsung
Whatever mobile apps the organization chooses to build for its employees or customers, its crucial to make the
apps easy to use. Most people are already trained to use their mobile devices for consumer apps which have a
high ease of use and they expect their enterprise apps to be on par.
Prat Vemana, Director of the Velocity Lab and Global Mobile Strategy at Staples

Our recommendations for a successful mobile strategy

Draw a vision. Involve all stakeholders to draw a vision behind the mobile adoption. Determine
the scope, allocate resources and establish policies to govern it.
Lay down the technology blueprint. Clearly spell out the policies on device management, app
development, system integration, security and compliance. Communicate the blueprint with others.
Keep users at the centre of your strategy. The success or failure of your mobile efforts
depends on your users. Their need and expectations must be met. You must provide them with a rich
experience. A Center of Excellence will help you meet the requirements of users.
Get ready for the change. You are not only adopting a technology but also a practice. There will
be resistance to change. You need to pick a bunch of people who will act as trendsetters and involve
them at a very early stage. Communicate and co-ordinate your efforts, sharing initial success with
others to help motivate them.
Monitor to evolve. Creating a mobile strategy and implementing it is just the beginning. Monitor,
evaluate and review to measure its performance. Revise in response to failures. Then, repeat it.

Mobile Strategy: The Why, What And How In Creating Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy / 8

To Conclude
Mobility is no longer a choice; its a necessity for business. Implementing mobility in an enterprise involves
substantial upfront investments and efforts. Given the amount of money and efforts involved, it makes
perfect sense to optimize the deliverables and results through enterprise-mobility solutions to maximize
ROI. A robust mobile strategy can help you achieve just that by engulfing and integrating processes,
functions and people. Moreover, it also provides you with a long-term strategic vision and brings flexibility
into your mobile efforts to manage any shifts in the business environment. In the words of Eric Schmidt,
Former CEO and current Executive Chairman, Google, Mobile is so important; put your best people on
mobile. If you dont have a mobile strategy, you are no longer relevant. We couldnt agree more.

About [x]cube LABS

Headquartered in Dallas, U.S, [x]cube LABS is a
leading specialty mobile solutions provider and
consulting company. With expertise across all the
major mobile platforms, [x]cube has delivered
over 500 apps till date and has an enviable client
list comprising of some of the biggest brands like
GE, Intel, Texas Instruments, Hasbro, Mattel and
24 Hour Fitness. Perfect understanding of the
mobile technology space complimented with the
capability to deliver end-to-end solutions, makes
[x]cube the perfect mobile consultant of choice.

Reach [x]cube LABS

connect@xcubeLABS.com
1-800-805-5783
www.xcubeLABS.com

To integrate your enterprise people, processes and products with customized, avant-garde mobility
solutions or to explore mobility opportunities in your enterprise with our experts, please feel free to
contact us at connect@xcubeLABS.com.
We encourage you to continue exploring our website ( www.xcubeLABS.com ) to find out more about
our services.

[x]cube is the premier mobile solution partner for companies and individuals creating the next generation of digital applications.
[x]cube develops custom solutions for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile platforms.
[x]cube is a division of PurpleTalk, Inc.
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