Some of you may have read that most companies have
deployed mobile technology for the benefit of their
workforce.
You would be forgiven if you believed you are a member
of a sedentary species facing extinction. Yet the truth is you are
part of a majority who have not banished paper and who may not feel
unproductive when they are unconnected outside the
office.
So why have analysts been predicting a mobile revolution for three
years in a row? Surveys published by industry analyst firms such as
Ovum seek to provide answers about new IT purchasing patterns. But
taken out of context, statistics are often meaningless and tend to
feed the latest hype.
I am not suggesting there is no demand or need for mobile devices
and applications. Many of the respondents to Ovum's latest mobile
enterprise user survey, for instance, use mobile tools and see
mobile technology as beneficial to their business. But few have
allocated a budget to fund the mobile data projects that 60%
claimed to have in the pipeline.
Most mobile deployments occur due to the demand of a handful of
noisy users, where the main benefit is keeping senior executives
happy. At the other end of the spectrum, companies in industries
such as logistics and utilities are investing in field-force
applications to cut costs and improve overall performance.
These deployments demonstrate the value of mobile business
applications, but field workers are not the largest group of mobile
users.
The challenge for companies is not to demonstrate the usefulness of
mobile technology, but to demonstrate in a business case that it is
a solution to a business problem, not a technology that is nice to
have.
Translating gut feel into hard cost savings or productivity gain
into profit is not simple. New technology generates new performance
indicators, which makes measuring success up-front difficult. And
your troubles do not end here.
Those who demonstrated that mobile tools could save man-hours
previously spent filling in paper forms or doing nothing will have
to choose among many different technology strands and deploy
components possibly against the will of their workforce.
This is why most early adopters are either large companies which
can afford the services of consultants and integrators or companies
willing to purchase a hosted solution.
Yet mobile business applications will become mainstream in the near
future. Mobile e-mail is already seen as essential in many areas of
business and service companies with a large mobile workforce tend
to under-perform without the help of mobile tools.
As demand increases, it will be easier to justify an investment
based on a number of success stories and to source pre-packaged
solutions, which a number of suppliers are busy designing.
Uptake will increase in 2004 but there may not be a revolution -
change will happen over the next few years.
Elsa Lion is an analyst at Ovum
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