These days, everyone from individuals to enterprises recognise mobile as the de-facto standard computing platform. Perhaps even more so now, as we adapt to life post COVID-19.
Change is in the air. It has been for some time given the rate in which technology is advancing. Businesses continue to adjust to how things are done – from an operational and occupational perspective.
We’ve already looked at how the CIO’s role is evolving, but it’s not just IT that’s altering its perspective. Everyone in the c-suite needs to meet the challenges that lie ahead – in particular the CFO, who needs to better understand how mobile technology, infrastructure, and processes are working – and how this impacts business processes, operational efficiency, and financial growth.
Understanding The Challenges
To better understand mobility from a financial perspective, a survey conducted amongst 100+ senior finance executives representing a variety of industries, showed that:
1) expenses are not being well-managed as mobile usage increases 2) corporate resources not being adequately secured 3) the employee experience is being negatively impacted 4) and most importantly, corporate growth efforts not being fully supported.
Other key findings included:
- Most companies have at least a basic mobility strategy
- Almost all agree that mobility technology should be a key strategic business concern for CFOs
- About half says the CFO should be an owner or shared owner of mobility and mobile-technology decisions
- About three quarters of the companies’ mobile technology infrastructure (sourcing, support, connectivity, risk/compliance, control) is performing well
- About half have created mobile applications that mimic traditional business processes
- Less than half of the companies surveyed have created mobile applications that reflect mobile-optimised business processes
The Way Forward
So, if the CFO needs to play a bigger role in ensuring the company growth, they also need to play an active role in how IT – particularly mobile solutions – are managed.
The easiest way forward, from a CFO’s perspective, is to outsource everything. But with an outsourcing strategy, internal knowledge is still needed to connect the enterprise mobility management solution (EMM) to the company’s back-end systems and data. Vendor Management becomes a more important role as the interface between the business, IT and the supplier.
In our opinion it makes more sense to make EMM a core strategy to company success and manage the critical connectors internally. That way, ensuring the wider business becomes a connected enterprise is assured.
However, it’s easy to assume that rolling out a mobility strategy is just a simple case of giving employees the smartphone, tablet and subscription they need.
It’s more than that, it’s about making your company ready for a mobile-first strategy – and addressing data, providing support, offering lifecycle management of devices, solving warranty and repair issues, managing assets, controlling expenses, migrating existing workflows to mobile workflows and much more.
There’s a lot to consider, but most importantly, any mobility strategy should 100% support your business and its processes. Without that, there’s no alignment, drive, or ambition.
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