Mobile working Toolkit

Making mobility work for your business

Tags:
Mobility,
Mobile Working

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 15 Aug 2006 17:00 BST

...because return on investment (RoI) is something you only measure for a period of time — value of investment is progressive. You make a strategic decision rather than a one-off decision. You need to look at the tangible results and the intangible results, and those are the ones that are difficult to measure, such as the quality of the information.

DK: We have a good example of intangible benefits. One of the factors we look at, at American Express, is "stickiness". In other words, the services we offer become so attractive that companies don't need to look at our competitors. So one of the things we look at around mobility is to add services that, I wouldn't say remove us from the sales cycle, but ensure it is a much easier process.

SE: It is not easy to sell RoI... the strategic bit cannot be sold in one day. You need to sell the overall package. You are not going to sell a £1m or £2m overall development by saying it is a strategic move only. For that reason you need both. Some will be measurable, some won't.

GN: We did a strategic move at our company when we removed drive paperwork (and moved it to mobile technology). That was a strategic leap of faith by the company and what we have done over successive years is to have continuing iterations of that process.We are now on the fourth iteration of our scanning platform using industry-standard hardware and there we were able to see RoI. We made a saving in repair costs by going Bluetooth — over 30 percent.

MB: We are such a small business that I can't persuade my managers to do any investment at all unless we can demonstrate RoI.

Can mobile technology be trusted. Can it be secure?
KM: You need to take business continuity into consideration.

GN: You need to take security into account. It is very easy for a user to set up a wireless LAN and it is very easy for them to leave it wide open and jeopardise the security of your network.

But do users expect security from a mobile device? The expectation is a lot less.
KM: The expectation increases. For example, you want to print. As people come into contact with location-based services they want to be able to print all the time wherever they are. That is why, as soon as you come into contact with location-based services, the costs go up.

MB: People have got used to it. They expect it.

Are we at the stage with mobile technology where we don't have to worry about security too much because we have the devices, software, and so on to provide secure environments?
DK: It is still a huge concern and it is very much an arms race and is going to continue. Everything needs to be encrypted now.

What are the possibilities from mobile technology?
SE: We are down to two types of technology now, I think. The mobile phone and the mobile laptop. I know that when I put them down together I would like them to synchronise immediately. One logical device. Everything is mobile. But I think we should look at the user interface. They say, Windows is user-friendly. Why is it user-friendly? Because you need a lot of friends to use it. We need to develop an interface that is much simpler to use.

DK: There are two key areas that everybody is talking about. Convergence on the device and personalisation, and I think the device is less important. I think your device will split itself into two. One is the work authorisations and requests, and so on. The other is personal. That is two devices now but increasingly it will be one and you are going to be able to set up what you want in the way you want to receive it. Increasingly we will see convergence on the same device.

GN: I think increasingly we will see convergence. Now some people are happy to have two of everything. It is going to be very important that there is a common device.

MB: I don't believe in convergence. I want a small phone I can actually put in my pocket and I want a PDA with a larger screen that means I can actually read that Excel spreadsheet attachment. I don't think that is a notebook.
The danger of single devices is that there are times when I don't want to connect with what I do at work.

Who wants to be connected all the time?
KM: I want to be connected all the time, but there is a big issue here. We do not want to create an environment where we are putting people under stress. If you create an environment where people are connected all the time, you are creating an environment where people spend their entire lives only working to benefit the enterprise. There has to be a balance; you have to tell people, "We are not trying to create robots".

SE: The impetus should definitely not come from the corporation. It should come from the individual. We need to have a technology company to build the ability but it is definitely down to the individual to create the right balance.