Enterprise Mobility : Still for the Biggies

While the sales force automation continues to rule the roost for enterprise
mobility, other functions and even verticals hopped onto the mobile enterprise
applications chariot in the last year. But enterprise mobility is still
perceived as a way of connecting the roaming personnel with the back-office
data.

The perception of enterprise mobility, however, is showing some signs of
maturity, with a lot of companies looking at the option seriously and a lot of
players wanting to enter the domain. The benefits of having a mobility
infrastructure in place are also becoming clear.

As per a Forrester report on enterprise mobility, having a well mobilized
workforce can save an organization up to 40% of valuable man hours, and can
result in a consolidated increase in the overall efficiency of employees.

The Stakes

In spite of the clear benefits, businesses have till now shown reluctance to
adopt enterprise mobility. It is still mainly restricted to the large
enterprises where there are clear advantages of scale. This can perhaps be
attributed to the hardware oriented approach that the vendors are focusing on.

Right now, the go-to-market approach of enterprise mobility vendors can be
divided into two segmentsthe hardware and the software part. We, however, are
still in the process of evolving the hardware to accommodate a mobility
platform. But a hardware oriented approach is not exactly what can be envisioned
for India, given the price sensitivity of our nation.

The change shall come only once the focus shifts decisively towards
intelligent applications, rather than fancy devices. As Shubho Bhattachrya, CEO,
CDC CRM Solutions notes, Business applications should be designed in a way that
they are intelligent enough to push themselves through the most rudimentary of
devices. Even in terms of advancement of enterprise mobility, we are quite
behind the other nations. Although there is no dearth of technology and
application developers, the adoption hasnt been too impressive.

Until recently, even sending bulk SMSes to the sales force was considered a
mobility adoption. But now we have evolved to reach what the experts call the
email stage. As Vadiraj, VP and head of mobile application business for
MindTree notes, A major chunk of enterprise mobility in India right now is
mobile email. Right now it garners at least 40-50% of the mobile enterprise
market.

While moving from meassages to email is progress in itself, we are still far
from the western definition of enterprise mobility that encompasses
everythingthe integration of cell phones into a corporate PBX system, to
vertically oriented solutions involving the quick delivery of
productivity-enhancing information to people in the field, the factory, the
warehouse, at cash registers and at patients bedsides.

The most prominent challenge for enteprise mobility right now seems to be
security. Apart from security, there are other elements plaguing the mobility
scenario. One of the biggest ailment seems to be the patching up of pieces
together. Enterprise mobility is yet to reach the stage of seamless integration.

Mehak Chawla

mehakc@cybermedia.co.in