Enterprise Mobility is Not for Everyone, Just Most

Sybase's Willie Jow

A couple of months back I listened to a presentation by Sybase's VP of Mobile Solutions, Willie Jow, and later interviewed him at the Enterprise Mobility Exchange.  During his presentation he emphasized that enterprise mobility is for nearly everyone in a company, not just a select few.  On one of his presentation slides (see image), he listed various roles in most enterprises that can benefit by having mobile solutions:

• Business leaders
• Managers
• Knowledge workers
• Marketers
• Sales
• Plant Operators
• Warehouse staff
• Field technicians
• Partners
• Consumers

I took note of this list.  Why?  Because in my mobile strategy consulting with large companies, they have rarely considered mobile solutions for more than a few of these categories.  For example, seldom have they ever considered how their partners and suppliers could benefit from mobile solutions.

However, I was consulting with a large water utility in Europe yesterday that was, in fact, planning to provide mobile solutions for their partners.  These partners provided important services and were a critical part of their service delivery system.  They had the same need to have real-time access to important back office data on mobile devices as the FTEs (full time equivalents).

Supporting partners has its own set of challenges.  It is hard to dictate what mobile devices partners should use.  They most often have their own preferences.  The water utility I mentioned above is looking to utilize mobile HTML5 apps so their partners can easily utilize them on a variety of mobile device platforms and operating systems.

The list above highlights the large variety of users, use cases and potential mobile apps.  It also emphasizes the importance of enterprise mobility to the future of businesses.  Companies that don't support enterprise mobility in these areas will suffer.  It is impossible to manage a real-time enterprise that involves a mobile workforce without supporting mobility.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

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Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.