Enterprise Mobile Benchmark Study Offers Guidance

A comprehensive enterprise mobile device and application strategy, if executed correctly, can become a significant competitive advantage. But, there's a growing need for answers to the questions troubling many IT executives -- with regard to their mobile device policies, the adoption of media tablets, and mobile application development costs and practices.

According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), corporate-liable devices still prevail with 77 percent of survey respondent organizations providing smartphones to their employees and 49 percent providing media tablets in 2011.

Of these corporate-liable devices, 70 percent were purchased by the organization and issued to the employees while only 7 percent were purchased by the employee with full or partial reimbursement.

The goal of the study, based on responses from CIOs and IT professionals in the U.S. and Europe, is to provide IT organizations with insight into how their peers have addressed similar mobility issues.

Highlights from the IDC Mobile Benchmark Study include:

• Employees in executive, sales, IT, and marketing job functions are more often issued a smartphone over other functions within an organization.
• For corporate-liable smartphones, most organizations (73 percent) pay the entire mobile service bill (voice and data) directly to the mobile service provider. Similarly, 71 percent of organizations pay the entire mobile service plan for corporate-liable tablets.
• To mitigate risk and support costs of letting employees bring their own devices, 45 percent of the respondents provide limited IT help desk support for business applications on individual-liable smartphones, while 42 percent report they provide limited IT help desk support for business applications on individual-liable tablets.
• In both cases, hardware issues are relayed back to the mobile service provider. In 33 percent of the organizations surveyed, no support is provided for individual-liable smartphones and 44 percent of respondents reported no support for individual-liable tablets.
• Surprisingly, a high percent of respondents reported they expect tablets will be a second device to the traditional laptop/desktop PC.
• The notion that tablets would be treated as second devices to laptops -- and refreshed every 2.5 years -- will be costly for IT organizations in the long run. IDC estimates it will cost the average large organization an additional 1 percent of their IT budget every year just to refresh these media tablets.

"Many IT organizations are currently working through their mobile device strategy and policy issues. To be successful, IDC recommends that IT executives establish a governance committee including finance, HR, and Legal to outline a comprehensive Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy, including use policies and cost allocation methods," said Meredith Whalen, senior vice president, IT Executive & Industry Research, IDC.

Most importantly, IDC recommends that IT executives identify the costs associated with developing and supporting multiple mobile platforms, and apply a governance strategy to mobile application development efforts to ensure projects are prioritized based on the highest value add to the enterprise.

IDC's Mobile Benchmark Study was designed to address the biggest questions IT executives are facing around their mobile device policies, including tablet adoption and mobile application development costs and practices.

The study surveyed 52 CIOs and senior IT professionals in the U.S. and Europe during the months of September 2011 and November 2011. Ms. Whalen provides a summary the study findings in the following brief video presentation.

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Business Social Networking Upside-Downside

Social media tools are entering the workplace, either by thoughtful intent or purely by accident. To date, for those organizations that actually have a plan of action, most tend to focus more on "damage containment" policies for their employees.

Is a protection-centric strategy the prudent approach for concerned -- but otherwise uninformed -- business leaders, or is it shortsighted thinking that undervalues the upside opportunity?

Cisco released the results of a third-party global market study designed to assess how organizations use consumer social networking tools to collaborate externally.

The use of these tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, are connecting organizations with their external stakeholders. On the upside, the tools connect people and information, establish potential new routes to market, and enhance customer intimacy and brand awareness.

According to the third-party researcher, the study findings indicate that we're at the early stages of adoption and in the process of identifying key challenges -- such as the need for increased governance and IT involvement.

Market Study Highlights
Of the organizations interviewed, 75 percent identified social networks as the consumer-based social media tools they primarily use, while roughly 50 percent of the group also identified extensive use of microblogging.

Social networking tools are spreading into core business areas, including marketing, human relations, and customer service. Within marketing and communications, these tools have already become an integral part of early-adopter initiatives.

Small and medium-sized businesses are actively using social networking channels to generate sales leads, but this remains a growth opportunity for larger companies.

Only one in seven of the companies that participated in the research noted a formal process associated with adopting consumer-based social networking tools for business purposes.

Only one in five participants identified any policies in place concerning the use of consumer-based social networking in the enterprise. Within the respondent base, social networking governance typically involves more stakeholders than standard corporate initiatives.

Due to the unstructured nature of social networking, companies continue to struggle with policy creation and adoption, as copying an established governance process from other more structured areas often doesn't work for social networking.

Only one in 10 respondents noted direct IT involvement in externally facing social networking initiatives. Although IT typically isn't involved as a primary decision maker, respondents did recognize the need for these tools to scale and properly integrate with existing business processes to reap maximum benefits.

The new study is based on extensive interviews with 105 participants representing 97 organizations in 20 countries around the globe. Conducted between April and September 2009, the research was carried out by leading business schools in the United States and Europe.

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