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Successfully navigating the mobility ecosystem

Successfully navigating the mobility ecosystem

Mobile devices are liberating the workforce, allowing employees more freedom than ever to access critical business information on the road. Unfortunately the growing reliance on those devices is creating serious headaches for CIOs

Your ultimate goal should be to develop a good understanding of the most effective way to work with each player in the mobility ecosystem, in order to more effectively predict and control mobility costs. One way to gauge where you stand now is to ask two questions: Do we currently have the resources to interact with the various vendors to efficiently deploy 250 devices? How would we handle 2500 devices?

Think about how you currently select and negotiate carrier plans and the time your staff spends comparing wireless offerings, ordering and activating devices, managing warranty claims, and handling issues with billing or device defects. Which of those types of activities do you want to do internally and which might be offloaded, to allow your staff to concentrate on more strategic projects?

Meeting enterprise needs in a consumer-oriented world

As you assess your in-house mobility expertise, keep in mind that the mobile-device market is a consumer-oriented one, with very short product cycles. For CIOs, that's one of the more infuriating aspects of managing mobile devices. Lacking insight into product roadmaps, enterprises struggle to make platform and device plans that need to take a long view.

Device manufacturers are going to continue to discontinue older devices to make way for more feature-rich replacements on a fairly short cycle. Efforts to encourage more enterprise-friendly practices are underway, but while the market is still focused on consumers, you will need to find ways to select and procure devices that support your business requirements. Start by allocating staff for mobility-specific planning. They will become increasingly knowledgeable about all the issues involved in procuring devices, deploying them to disparate users, and comparing support services offered by your vendors. Whether your users require rugged devices for gathering data in industrial settings or smartphones that facilitate report generation on the road, you will need to understand how the market works to streamline your interactions with mobility players.

By tapping the knowledge of external experts who have long-term relationships with mobility vendors, you may find ways to take advantage of economies of scale to get better pricing on devices or learn about product plans that are normally unavailable. Regardless of how you decide to become a more informed mobility customer, insist on knowledge transfer when you consult outside experts. Mobility will play an increasingly important role in the enterprise going forward. Your understanding of the complex mobility ecosystem will help you plot the best course for your enterprise.

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