Investment on mobility in India has been on the rise during the last year, predominantly
to enhance customer service and to make operations cost-efficient
In today's world of business, time is money, therefore resolving the problem fast
and providing information as quickly as possible are the needs of the hour. Hence
enterprise mobility is regarded as having high potential and is slowly gaining traction
in order to improve the productivity of mobile employees within the organization.
Employees on field job and less on desk can complete their tasks quickly and more
efficiently. Mobility facilitates to turn downtime into productive time, when mobile
employees are supported with business tools, viz voice and email.
On a Growth Spree
Enterprise mobility market has been growing strongly maturing in India. It's definitely
moving into the 'must-have' set of solutions from the 'good-to-have' segment. Adoption
of smartphones and tablets by business users in India has caught up, and is increasing
faster than ever. CIOs are excited about the ability to empower the mobile workforce
by delivering more capabilities via the devices they use. They are seeking to build
cohesive strategies for rolling-out innovative mobile solutions for their business.
Moreover, recent developments in the hardware, network, applications, and middleware
segments indicate that the growth in enterprise mobility is set to accelerate further
in the next couple of years.
Despite industry's consensus that enterprise mobility has gained momentum in the
US and Europe, in India the rate of adoption is relatively low but it has gained
significance. According to Sumanth Tarigopula, director, Best Shore application
services, HP India, there is a radical shift to mobility. The trend Bring Your Own
Device (BYOD) is making mobility absolutely real. Also, convergence of cloud, mobile,
and real-time analytics will further accelerate the in-take of mobility.
Steps for Deployment
In India, businesses are not designed for mobility. The key to mobility success
depends on how closely organizations align both business and IT drivers. Also, its
key to success is careful mobility planning. Sunil Lalvani, director, enterprise
sales, Research In Motion India notes, "Understanding your mobile users is an important
step in being able to make the right mobility decision for an organization. The
success of the project can depend on the uptake and the use of mobile applications.
As a result, it makes sense to start with an understanding of who within organization
is mobile. How mobile are they and what devices, processes, and applications do
they require to do their job? These facts and figures can be used to create a segmentation
model, which provides a view to understand current and predict future mobility needs
and to build your plan for mobility.
Be sure to canvass all applicable user groups when you gather information. Categorizing
the tasks and requirements of each user group makes it easier to determine how to
support them with mobility. Also, it's important to understand how people within
each user group view their growing mobility. Their attitude and perspective is important
for the success mobility planning and deployment in an enterprise.
Consultation before the deployment is paramount for having the right IT and administrative
policies in place. It enables enterprises to shortlist on the software, whom to
provide access, what information ought to be provided, and on devices.
Enterprises will have to make an initial investment on license fees, hardware and
software costs, professional service fees, and labor cost. Besides, companies have
to incur voice and data expenses. Enterprises ought to have right policies in place.
"CIOs can choose to provide what information to be accessed. They should not allow
the access of all information but only the relevant information," states Prakash
Sreewastav, CEO, WINIT.
"Integration of the back-end infrastructure is crucial. Back-end should be located
on cloud. CIOs have to rationalize, they have to consider which are the right apps
to mobilize," advises Sunil Gupta, SVP and head, mobility service lines, Symphony
Services.