My Mobile Life

It is easy to forget about the portion of your workforce that mobile technology is so overwhelming that they are ignoring it.  Either they are so engrossed in the way that they have been doing business that they refuse to change or they just cannot justify the time to learn.  Although the percentage is getting lower by the day, but I would envision at least 30% of our field force falls into this category. 

Ignoring them is not the answer.  Of course, they do have factors working against them staying in the age of briefcases, taking messages on paper and office visits.  Visiting a wireless store these days will bring only options of smartphones, with one dusty feature phone in the corner.  Field rep’s customers are also bringing the technology to them in the form of social media, texting for service or basic questions.  Their family, work colleagues and company new employees have grown up with digital technology and peer pressure is causing them to look at new technology.  This can sometimes be a detriment.  It can cause a late adopter to purchase technology that they just can’t use.

So why should you care?  The reason that many of these late-adopters are still around is that they can do something that many of the technophiles have never learned, they can sell.  They are able to communicate with customers and at the end of the day when you have all these different forms of communicating, a face-to-face discussion (could be Skype) or telephone call still is a great way to close a sale.

How can you change the culture or help late-adopters learn mobile technology?  Here are a couple of ideas:

• Use personas to segment your workforce.  You can adapt the level of education to the different persona groups.  Using online training may not work for late-adopters, try face-to-face whenever possible.
• Give them free resources.  All the providers have done a better job over the past few years or putting free resources either at the store or online.
• Use all levels of resources in your app design process.  Having them contribute towards the project may increase their willingness to use it.
• Offer discounts and earn-as-you-sell incentives.  It is hard for late adopters to justify the cost of some of this technology. Use a payback program based on incentives to drive adoption.
• Internal social media helps.  If their colleagues are demonstrating or providing suggestions on how to use mobile technology, it is more accepted than a formal corporate training program.

I am sure I will be back blogging about the latest and greatest, but I am curious how your company is addressing this issue?

What is the ROI of mobility?  There have been a couple articles about the ROI of Apps, but what about the ROI of all your initiatives in Mobility?  It really depends on your corporate mobility lifecycle on what you can substantiate.  For instance, it seems like most of the companies that I have researched or have spoken to, have followed the same path of “deploying” mobility at their company:

1.       A need arises from someone in the organization to get email on their smart device, usually a smart phone. 

2.       I/S satiates that need by offering isolated ActiveSync capabilities

3.       Demand grows, so a MDM solution is purchased.

4.       Users define what devices are provisioned and guidelines and policies are written

5.       Demand continues to grow, third-party apps are  popular, tablet devices are introduced into the MDM infrastructure

6.       The “business” needs to do more on their devices, so remote access and virtual options are introduced

7.       The “business” demands a better user experience, so the development of home-grown apps appears

8.       MAM and other measures are put in place to manage the entire  infrastructure

You would think that with the popularity of mobility that it would rank right up there as one of the most important topics in your organization, but some executives are still asking the questions.  I.e. What kind of productivity can you get by accessing email outside the office?  Is there really an advantage to working outside the office vs. in the office?  What is considered a mobile sale?  Sure you can say, “Well, everyone is doing it, so it must be valuable”.  But wouldn’t it be great if you had an actual answer.  I do not have a proven formula, but here are some thoughts:

1.       What kind of productivity can you get by accessing email outside the office?   For sales agents, you can take the time that they were spending in the office answering emails and that is your “gained time”.  So a formula could be: average gained time X number of devices on MDM= Possible gain in minutes of time available to do sales-related activities.  Note: This implies that they would be working on sales-related activities the whole gained time.  Also, it means that they are actually working more.

2.       Is there really an advantage to working outside the office vs. in the office? This is really hard to do and frankly, not realistic.  To do so, you would need to figure out a typical schedule in the office vs. outside the office, but the amount of factors involved here are not worth trying to make the argument. 

3.       What is a mobile sale?  Let’s start a trend around this!  A mobile sale is simply completing a sale on a mobile device.  Sure, you can try to measure where you are in the sales cycle and determine what value doing those processes are outside the office, but the simplest method is for the main sales systems to track sales from mobile devices.

All of these stats would have to be weighed against the cost of your MDM, MAM and any outside development work you are doing. 

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts!  Am I right on target?  What is your company doing?  Better options to track the ROI of Mobility?

This blog is not about me, but since I did not address this in the first post, here is the scoop about me and the “ My Mobile Life” blog.  I have been researching Enterprise Mobility for the past several years and although there are great resources out there (with the Enterprise Mobility Forum being amongst the best of them), I wanted to get the message out there from the actual enterprise.  Most of the info we receive is from a consultant, tech magazines/websites, a business or developer trying to sell you something.  I am writing this blog to be the voice of the Enterprise and from the Enterprise mobile worker.  Whereas much of the info you hear about is assuming a “perfect world’ scenario, i.e. – Developing apps with the perfect infrastructure (no mainframe, endless resources with years of app development experience), our mobility team and agency force is living the “real-world” of integrating mobility within our company. 

My background is mostly in program and project management, although I was a web designer and still love playing with new software.  To that end, I still am the local Adobe User Group Manager.  When people ask me what I do, I quite simply say that I help my company change how to work more productively and efficiently through Mobile Technology.  My position sits half-way between the business/agency force and I/S, so I get the unique perspective of hearing feedback and generating requirements from the consumers of technology and working with the team that develops the solutions.  If you want to learn more about me or want to contact me with any questions, please visit my about.me page.  Stay tuned for a new blog post next week on measuring the value of mobility.

As someone who works for a large financial services company who represents a Field Sales force, I think quite often about what could be improved with all the companies and products that I work with or consume.  So given that Black Friday is coming up, I have come up with my Enterprise Mobility Holiday Wish List-these are devices or services I wish existed.   Please keep in mind that, “I love”, mobile technology and what it can do today, but a few improvements wouldn’t be bad.  Here is the list:

1. Wireless Coverage Everywhere – “Can you hear me now?”, not always!  Many of our company’s sales reps work out in desolate areas that would benefit from accessing the wireless internet.  I wish there was some sort of company that “resold” wireless coverage and aggregated multiple providers to provide the best coverage or we just had wifi everywhere (not just coffee shops and hotels).
2. Blackberry focuses on being a “Cool Business Device” - Given the “consumerization” of IT, for some reason Blackberry decided to start making devices for consumers.  Start making cool devices that totally integrate with the Enterprise.  PS- Make a 10” playbook that consumers can actually interact with, not a 7” device that fits in the suit pocket of the two executives that still wear suits.  Ok, P.S. #2- having to reboot your device after every app install isn’t practical.
3. Pay for what you use data plans – Enterprise customers are frequently “treated” to higher data plan costs for using a MDM solution.  Shouldn’t it actually cost less for Enterprises?  They typically are accessing applications and email, not streaming videos.
4. More Business Apps in the App Store and Marketplace – I know this is getting better and there apps that are out on the app stores help improve productivity, but there is opportunity to do a lot more.
5. Private Clouds that are functional – We want the ability to save documents like the typical consumer does in “dropbox”, and the cloud should be owned or “leased” by the company.
6. More devices like the Atrix – The concept of the Motorola “Atrix” is what our Field Sales reps want.  One device that can dock in a tablet, but has the power to do everything.
7. Tablets or Phones that can beam out a presentation – We have cameras, how about a projector?
8. Ability to setup meetings with the iOS calendar app – Yes, Apple took it one step in allowing us to find users within the enterprise, but without being able to check availability of those users, what is the point?
9. “Siri” for Enterprise Apps Help -  It doesn’t have to be specifically “Siri”, but it would be great to have an app that provided verbal instructions on how to use or setup that app as you were using it.

I am stopping at 9 to break the norm.  Have a wish list of your own?  Know of products or services that fit these 9?  If so, I would love to hear about them.  Remember, the Enterprise Mobility Forum is for Enterprise Users, not just companies that are selling to us- please contribute online, I would love to hear from you!

Matt