2008 The year of the mobile customer !

In my role as Vice Chairman of the Mobile Data Association, I recently organised an industry event to look at at the short term future of mobile data technologies. Below is the resulting press release.

More sociable, cheaper and easier to use – The Mobile Data Association (MDA) studies the mobile landscape for 2008


2008 will be a year where mobile customers benefit from a range of key service and technology developments. Social networks, flat rate charging, and products which are far easier to use will be the major themes in the mobile market, according to the Mobile Data Association. At its annual ‘Future of Mobile’ Conference in London, the MDA and independent industry experts gave their predictions on the defining trends for next year.

“2008 is likely to bring the flat rate tariffs that consumers and businesses have been seeking for some considerable time,” commented Rob Bamforth, principal analyst with Quocirca. “In addition, devices that work at a level of ‘adequate ease’ are likely to be a major area of focus – it’s not just about adding ever more features, it’s about giving users what they truly want, and that’s ease of usefulness.”

The Mobile Data Association has also forecast key mobile industry data for 2008, and expects a series of key market and technology trends to be visible during the year.

Market Milestones:

Among the market trends to watch in 2008, the MDA forecasts:

The worldwide cellular subscriber base will reach 3.75 billion by year end 2008.
The UK will account for 75 million of the global figure, but more significantly voice users will go increasingly mobile.
Text messaging volumes in the UK will reach 60 billion for the whole of 2008.

Technology trends:

The MDA believes the key technology developments for 2008 will include:

5GB storage wil become more standard in devices.
Bluetooth adoption will head towards 2 Billion worldwide - opening up new Application channels for 2008 Particularly Health / Social Care and wirefree headsets.
Mobile TV based on dual mode cellular / DVB-H will be launched throughout Europe, but not in the UK, due to regulatory delays.
There will be major activity surrounding the Olympics as UK observers seek to learn lessons from Beijing 2008, including, ticketing, Mobile TV, use of User Generated Content.
3G coverage will grow, with HSDPA/ HSUPA / Wifi additions offering more choice of Mobile Digital Access and downloadable content.

Paul Lee, Director, Deloitte Research: Technology, Media and Telecommunications commented, "Designing mobile devices from the ground up to be easier to use should pay handsome dividends for the mobile industry. The challenge isn't to have the most technology in each phones. What's more important is to incorporate functionality that's relevant to each category of user."

The mobile data dimension considerations

1) The mobile data dimension has existed for a decade or more, with laptops, but now we have a plethora of devices with capacity to hold a lot of data and cause problems, but how should enterprises reign all this in without compromising productivity or de-powering users?

IT departments today consider the acquisition and deployment of desktop and laptop technology as strategic. Processes are put in place to ensure devices are corporately configured, have the appropriate connectivity, security and management tools. Any business which does not have processes to manage the deployment of desktop and laptop technology is asking for trouble.

The same should apply mobile phones, PDA’s, smart phones etc, these must be managed in the same way as a desktop deployment. Mobile devices such a PDA's and Smartphone’s etc are becoming common place; they are functionally very rich and can deliver a lot more than personal information management to a business. Senior managers are of course attracted by these shiny devices also have a tendency to buy them on their expenses at airports etc, then ask the IT department to “give me push email like is says on the box”. This can result in the IT department supporting a whole plethora of devices and operating systems with all the problems associated with an unstructured approach. If you do not have a mobility policy then you should be writing one to ensure control is maintained and taking advantage of the business benefits mobile computing brings.


2) What are the essential ingredients of a coherent mobile data strategy?

Successful mobilisation the enterprise relies heavily on centralising of IT systems, having disparate IT will add to the complexity, cost, delivery and ultimately the success of the final solution.

A coherent mobile data strategy must include the following elements, applications or data that is to be mobilised, mobile device management, mobile device security, approved mobile devices, appropriate training, usage policy, data protection act compliance and that all important user support via a help desk.


3) What are the challenges posed by proliferating data and IT mobility?

Mobile IT by its nature is geographically dispersed and therefore creates its own unique challenges devices can be subject to, loss, theft or damage, this can be challenging if not dealt with by;

Deploying an appropriate perimeter security to protect the data on the mobile device. This could also include data encryption for sensitive data

Regular data synchronisation with the central server to ensure that no data that is created on the mobile device is lost. Alternatively Web based applications could be considered where appropriate to minimise data loss. However Web based solutions only work when a connection is possible to the server with wireless technology this is not always possible.

One other consideration ensuring mobile device management is considered; the cost of bringing field workers in to upgrade software and fix application issues can be prohibitive.

4) Assuming there is a trend back to centralized IT, how do organisations address the need for redundancy and disaster recovery ?

The dependency on IT systems whether mobile or desk based for the majority of businesses means that when these systems fail the impact can be crippling. High availability IT infrastructure is the key to ensure continuity of service, whether this is achieved by having an infrastructure with a high level of built in redundancy or using a grid or virtual machine approach will ultimately be a financial decision. One other alternative that is becoming more popular is outsource the server infrastructure to a hosting company who have the specialist environments to ensure the necessary high availability of your systems.

5) What impact is mobile data having on the IT support function?

Providing support of mobile users is a challenge as they are not confined to the office. When a mobile worker has an issue wherever possible this will need to be dealt with remotely. This means an investment remote device management software which will allow the IT support desk to access the mobile device remotely to diagnose and fix the problem, without this will result in field worker stopping work to bring their device into the office. The cost of device support and management needs to be factored into the total cost of ownership of your mobile solution. Alternatively to minimise the internal impact, the support function could be outsourced to a third party organisation.


6) Should all data on mobile devices be instantly replicated over the network, or just held centrally in some cases?

Because mobile devices are vulnerable to being dropped, stolen or lost any data created locally must be synchronised back to a central location as soon as possible to avoid potential loss, however ultimately this will rely on either the fieldworker manually synching the data or a simple application that manages the synchronisation process. However both methods rely on having wireless connectivity to do so. Therefore there could be a possibility of data loss if the device fails after data has been entered and before a synchronisation. With mobile data applications it is possible ensure that any data entered whist the device has no wireless connectivity automatically synchronises once the device picks up a wireless connection, thus taking out the manual process and minimising the risk of data loss.

Thin client or web based interfaces to centrally located data work well provided the field worker only requires access to the data when a wireless connection can be established thus providing a suitable solution to data continuity and control.

7) How greatly does mobility increase an enterprise’s exposure to security vulnerabilities or breach confidentiality?

Having company data on mobile devices scattered around the country does mean that there is a risk to malicious acts, this requires policies to be put in place to ensure that any risk from potential malicious acts is minimised. These could include only allowing any sensitive data need by an field worker to be requested, used once then removed from the device. Using mobile device management software, if an employee leaves the organisation but fails to return their mobile device, then the device could be remotely wiped removing all company data.

8) Are compliance issues enforcing data centralization and replication of mobile data?

It is proven that the correct use of mobile devices can make a huge difference to businesses and their customers; they bring efficiency, productivity and increase customer satisfaction, whilst reducing businesses fixed costs. These devices are normally deployed to replace an existing paper process that is prone to error, loss, accidental and malicious breaches in privacy and company process! Mobile brings to a large degree and element of compliance and security not possible with use of paper!

Corporate manslaughter and the mobile workforce

On April 6th 2008 the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide act 2007 introduces a new offence of corporate manslaughter. This applies to corporate bodies in both the public and private sectors. However, it only applies in circumstances where an organisation owed a duty of care to the victim (employees, sub-contractors, certain customers etc) under the law of negligence. The offence can be punishable by an unlimited fine and orders for remedial action.

This new law will make it easier for an organisation to be found guilty of manslaughter through the result of gross failings of senior management. The definition senior management is not limited to the board of Directors and now includes those who have a significant role in the management of the whole or part of an organisation.

The proposed new corporate manslaughter law will not affect the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work Act or its associated health and safety regulations in any way. All employers must still comply with their duties under existing health and safety legislation.

The HSWA imposes a duty on employers to "ensure so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety and welfare at work of all its employees" and to ensure that persons not in their employment are "not exposed to risks to their health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable".
In addition, there are hundreds of health and safety regulations which set out more specific health and safety duties. For example, under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers must carry out a 'suitable and sufficient' risk assessment of their activities.
As a result of this new law, duty of care and traceability must become a priority to senior managers in any organisation.

Using Mobile to manage risk

There are two areas in which enterprise mobility solutions assist in meeting with organisations duty of care obligations these are;
Risk assessment
Lone worker protection

Risk Assessment
Risk assessment has become a key process in the protection of the mobile workforce. A risk assessment is an important step in protecting the workforce, as well as complying with the law. A risk assessment is a careful examination of what, whilst undertaking job functions, could cause harm. This allows the decision to be made as to whether or not enough precautions are being taken or should more be taken. Workers and others have a right to be protected from harm caused by a failure to take reasonable control measures.

A correctly deployed enterprise mobility solution will provide any mobile workforce with an effective tool to undertake risk assessments at key stages of job work flow. Not only this, the enterprise mobility solution will provide a traceable record for each risk assessment undertaken as proof of compliance.


So how does this work ?

Below are a few practical examples of risk assessment workflows that are currently being used by organisations to protect their mobile workforce;

Enterprise mobility (‘EM’) in transport and logistics is being used to undertake a ‘Start of Day’ HGV vehicle risk assessment. This works by forcing the driver, at the start of day to enter vital risk assessment data on the condition of the HGV vehicle and trailer unit prior to the driver recieving his days work. This ensures that the all important vehicle risk assessment is completed and the recorded information is stored safely in the organisations databases. Other risk assessments can be built into the EM system to ensure that if a particular delivery is over a certain weight, then the appropriate manual handling process is followed etc.

In the case of mobile workforces undertaking anything from asset management to vehicle servicing the use of EM to provide job specific risk assessments is set to become the duty of care tool of choice. As with the case of the HGV driver the field worker can use his PDA to undertake a vehicle safety check at the start of each day prior to receiving his jobs for the day. Throughout the working day, further check can be incorporated into the EM solution to cover job specific safety checks etc

The whole risk assessment process an easily be built into any enterprise mobility solution and will work for every known field worker discipline.


Lone Worker protection

Senior managers face significant challenges in their responsibilities for lone workers and as a minimum, they must;

Undertake appropriate health and safety risk assessments

Make provision for lone workers who may be faced with a risk of violence

Put contact procedures in place for emergencies so that the alarm can be raised and prompt medical attention provided if there is an accident

Ensure lone workers are medically fit and suitable for the lone-working role they have been assigned

Enterprise mobility can assist in providing the solution, in the previous section risk assessment was dealt with. Using PDA’s with built in GPS and software that can provide real time status updates workflows can be built to provide a good level of protection for lone workers;

Panic button and safety alert functionality
Using the GPS in the PDA we can accurately track the fieldworkers so at any time during the working day the exact location of all mobile staff is known.

A simple panic button function on the PDA can send a message for help to a central location giving the location of the fieldworker and also make a voice call to a call centre so that any abusive conversations can be recorded as evidence.

This feature can be further automated to protect the field worker is undertaking work on site as follows;

When the field worker arrives on site, he triggers a status message containing the date and time of arrival, the GPS coordinates and the postal address of the location. This information is sent from the PDA to the call centre. On activation of the on site status message, the PDA software starts an inactivity timer, which monitors the field workers usage of the PDA. For instance, if the device is used as expected to enter job information whilst on site the PDA alarm mechanism remains inactive. However, after a predetermined period of inactivity a message will appear on the PDA screen asking if the field worker is ok? If the field worker answers no or fails to respond to the message, the PDA will raise an alarm back at the call centre. Under normal fieldworker activity the PDA will not alarm and on completion of the job the safety alert mechanism will turn off until the field worker arrives at the next job.

Conclusion
The Corporate manslaughter bill amplifies the need for senior management to provide duty of care on their employee’s whether mobile or otherwise, the new bill makes it easier for organisations in breach to be prosecuted.

More emphasis will be placed on senior managers to prove duty of care policies and procedures are working and are being used by their employee’s. Paper systems could prove to be problematic as mistakes can be made and paper proof can easily be lost. Therefore use of enterprise mobility solutions in providing duty of care compliance will become more prevalent over the next 12 months.

If you have already deployed an enterprise mobility solution or if you are planning to do so, ensure that you build in duty of care into your mobility workflows.

Mobile and Flexibile working in local Government

Recently I was involved in a detailed report into the uptake of mobile and flexible working in local governement.

I have detailed below the executive summary from the the report.

If you would like a full copry of the report it can be found at: http://www.themda.org/mlc/default.asp

Introduction

Throughout history change has been fundamental to the evolution of both society and business. Change represents a new direction, a departure and often heralds a new way, a new approach and even a new beginning.

The survey and resulting report represents the first phase of the Mobile Data Association’s commitment to helping mobilise Local Government departments and services for the benefit of the authorities and their citizens. It is based on responses from more than 1,200 staff from 392 local authorities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 83.8% of the total.
The most significant finding is, that local authorities are in the early stages of making fundamental changes in the way they run public services by adopting mobile technology which will result in new efficient working practices.

A small number of Local Authorities (15%) are equipping there staff with laptop computers, personal digital assistants and smart phones, for example, benefits officers are processing claims and social care workers assessing needs in people’s homes, building and health inspectors are completing inspections on the spot rather than having to return to headquarters. Meanwhile, office workers are carrying out a wide range of roles from their homes, contributing to productivity, environmental benefits as well as more family-friendly employment.

The future is mobile

Nearly all respondents agree that both mobile and flexible working will help to improve services and operate more efficiently.

Significantly, local authorities with some experience of flexible or mobile working are more optimistic about efficiency gains than those that have yet to begin.
The majority of respondents with experience also feel that flexible and mobile working will lead to more responsive and better services for the citizen. However, there are still significant steps that must be taken to help mobile-based projects move from concept phase to established, deployed solutions with significant business and citizen benefits. This is confirmed by about 5% of respondents say they are struggling to overcome problems with changing to new ways of working, such as staff cultures and the up-front cost of new systems.

Presenting a new way forward

The reality is, that considered deployment of mobile technology brings significant benefit to all adopters; as referenced by a small number of key success stories in local authorities but widely across the private sector.

There are, however, significant concerns raised about the ability of Local Authorities to transform using mobile and flexible working when so many responses focus on technology driven pilots.

This requires local authority decision makers to reappraise the way mobile projects are approached. However the appetite amongst local authorities to adopt mobile technology is most encouraging and this is confirmed by the large number of pilots that are currently taking place.

Nearly everyone is planning it, some are doing it

In 2007, the vast majority of UK local authorities are piloting or implementing flexible and mobile working. With flexible working, most (45.9%) are still at the pilot stage, with 9.9% having moved already to roll out or live/implementation. Nearly three in ten (27.7%) are at the planning stage and only 16.5% have no plans (or know of no plans).

Mobile working is at a similar state of play, with 85% of respondents saying that their authority had some project under way at - 24.8% at the planning stage, 46.6% piloting and 15.3% implementing. Just 13.4% had no plans (or knew of no plans).
Most of the deployments to date of mobile working are revenues and benefits (including home visits), social services, environmental services and building control.

Flexible working appears more likely to be piloted or applied on a corporate basis rather than department specific; over half (53%) of those with live projects reported implementations across more than one service at the point of survey. Some of these are on a very large scale - 10% of live projects involve more than 500 people and 4% more than 1,000 people. The two largest projects cited by survey respondents cover 6,000 people and 12,500 people.
Regionally, the south east of England leads the way in rolling out both flexible and mobile working.

The number of pilots being undertaken is around 45%. This figure is very encouraging. However, the report identifies significant challenges that could prevent the success of these pilots

Mobile and flexible working support transformation and efficiency

Managers and front-line staff agree that both mobile and flexible working can help local authorities meet the government’s agenda of transforming local government, with its moves towards citizen-centric government run through shared IT services. This key finding shows near-unanimous agreement in local government for the positive potential of both flexible and mobile working.

Almost all respondents with experience of projects found that efficiency gains through improved productivity are there to be obtained (90%). Interestingly, this is a higher level of savings than expected by those local authorities who have yet to undertake flexible or mobile working projects; only just over 80% of those expected improved productivity.

The majority of respondents with current experience (around three-quarters) also feel that flexible and mobile working will lead to more responsive and better services for the citizen. On the other hand only just over half of respondents agree that mobile and flexible working will help them design services around the citizen – suggesting that efficiency alone is not enough to reshape processes with more citizen focus.

Respondents cite a wide range of other potential benefits from flexible working. These include environmental benefits, better working conditions for staff and better potential partnership working a key part of the transformational government policy.

Benefits found in both flexible and mobile working that were not expected include freeing up assets, improved emergency planning, reduced staff absence and increased productivity.

Among the 5% of respondents who said that flexible working would not help meet the transformational government agenda, staff contracts emerged as one barrier. Another respondent cited lack of trust as a reason for an authority rejecting home working outright. Lack of resources emerged as a potential obstacle.

Around half of all respondents felt that flexible working practices could lead to more efficient use of land and buildings; 40% felt that the same would be true for mobile working.
Among the 5% who said mobile working would not help with transformational government, concerns covered ambiguities in transformational government itself, technical limitations of mobile equipment.

As with the transformational government agenda, the vast majority of respondents with current experience with flexible and mobile working - 77% and 81% respectively - say that mobile and flexible working will help their authority comply with the Gershon efficiency agenda.
However only around a fifth of respondents believe that either flexible or mobile working will ultimately result in a reduction of the number of staff employed by their local authority.

Only 8% say that flexible working will not help meet the Gershon efficiency agenda; reasons include it bring too early to tell, new ways of working are too different for direct judgments to be made, and existing contractual arrangements constrain the council’s ability to make property savings. Another concern is that systems used at home break down more frequently than the systems in the office, and people home-working make far more mistakes.

A similar percentage, 7%, say that mobile working will not help meet the Gershon efficiency agenda. Reasons include the extra cost of mobile technology not leading to reductions in establishment costs. Respondents cite the need for more evidence from pilots and wider implementations of technology.

Mobile Technology is proving a challenge

The majority of the negative responses indicate that the technology is not reliable or suitable for mobile and flexible working; this indicates a severe lack of understanding on how to apply the technology appropriately, which suggests that these pilots are technology based rather than process based. The fact is mobile technology does work and there are some success stories in local authorities and numerous in the private sector that support this.
Most Local Authorities are not seeking expert assistance

When questioned about advice and guidance on the deployment of mobile and flexible working solutions very little is taken from industry experts and considerable faith is put in internal resources to provide this. In fact the findings show that only 1% of Local Authorities will seek assistance from commercial expert organisations (virtually all private sector businesses seek assistance). We believe this approach is fundamentally flawed and could result in a trial and error approach and a high risk of failure.


Mobile projects are still high risk

Respondee's state that there are considerable challenges in the deployment of flexible and mobile solutions. This is compounded with the lack of involvement of the end users when planning mobile working projects (less than 50%). This figure should be 100% to ensure buy-in from the users and, ultimately, successful deployment.

The result of both lack of engagement with expert organisations and the end users could result in a majority of pilots underway failing for lack of proper planning and understanding. This is a major concern which could result in the failure of 50% of the pilots and projects that are in the process of being deployed.

Knowing what to ask for

The majority of Local Authorities undertake an ITT process to select a suitable vendor and solution. The MDA suggests that all Local Authorities as part of their business case
development, undertake a formal information gathering exercise -. A structured Request for

Information (RFI) should be produced that defines how mobile users currently undertake their day to day work (field force workflow). Information should include details of how the vendors solution could meet the strategic aims of the authority; ie accommodation strategy, work/life balance aims, improvements in service delivery.. The RFI should be sent out to industry experts in enterprise mobility, with the brief: “This is what we do, tell us how mobile solutions will revolutionise this process and what the approximate costs are.” The resulting responses will provide valuable expert information which can then be used to create the business case, the ITT and the vendor selection process.

The MDA believes this additional process coupled with a keep it simple approach to ITT’s will make a fundamental difference to the quality of pilots and projects. This will ensure that ITT’s are neither too prescriptive nor making unrealistic demands and will provide a platform for vendors to suggest innovative technologies and processes matching an authority’s particular requirement.

Impact on the environment

Some of the most exciting potential benefits from flexible and mobile working are environmental. The survey finds evidence that they are starting to appear, but that the picture is complex. Only around one respondent in five says that flexible and mobile working would have no significant positive environmental impact.

The key environmental benefits flowing from both flexible and mobile working are reduced need for office space and unnecessary journeys. On the other hand, there is a discrepancy between environmental benefits predicted by people before projects are implemented and by those responding after pilots or projects are in place. In places, this gap is huge: for example 60% of people expect flexible working to ease transport congestion before programmes are in place; compared with 12% afterwards. (As local authorities generate only a tiny proportion of congestion, both figures may be optimistic.)

Percentages of those reporting environmental benefits from actual projects is still significant, however. More than a third or respondents say that office space is reduced, for example, which is impressive despite the fact that predictions beforehand were even more hopeful.

The deployment of mobile solutions will have a positive impact on any organisation’s carbon footprint. However the survey suggests that mobile projects are not having significant impact. Further research needs to be undertaken to understand why the impact is considered insignificant. This is an important but unexplored area. It is our intention to provide guidance on how mobile solutions can have a positive impact in reducing carbon emissions.

Barriers remain to be overcome

The survey identifies a range of technological, operational and cultural barriers that must be tackled before flexible and mobile working are implemented widely. Although many of these barriers are only reported by small numbers of local authorities, together they show that there is still plenty of work to be done to ensure the greatest levels of success are achieved by the greatest numbers of authorities.

Respondents who identified significant barriers to corporate adoption of mobile and flexible working say that managing people at a distance is more difficult than expected. Culture change and loss of personal contact or team spirit can also pose problems. On the other hand, technology and cost turn out to be less significant barriers than expected.

Mobile working attracts more concern than flexible working, with a range of issues raised. Many of these are technical barriers, such as a lack of wireless coverage; difficulties of integrating new mobile systems with existing IT systems; IT security; and issues such as battery life and the weight of a laptop to carry around.

Some responses indicate that significant barriers have been encountered among staff. The most significant barrier was the difficulty of introducing a major change in working culture. For flexible working, the other major concerns are a lack of staff technology skills, ranked equal second alongside loss of personal and peer group contact, fear of technology, and feelings of isolation.

For mobile working, lack of technology skills is an even greater concern, ranked at 50% alongside culture change; followed by fear of technology and a loss of personal and peer group contact. With mobile working, however, loss of personal and peer group contact turned out to be far less of a barrier than predicted, with 72% of respondents predicting problems before implementation and just 31% afterwards.
Feelings of isolation, a related barrier, also turn out to be less of a problem than feared, as did problems with self-motivation; a loss of guidance from senior staff; and general issues with introducing change.

Conclusion

The MDA believes Local Authorities are moving in the right direction and have demonstrated the benefits of mobile and flexible working. However, there are lessons to be learnt from industry that can further enhance both the speed of deployment and the satisfaction of the users and thus further enhance the Authorities’ efficiency and response to their citizen stakeholders.

The Enterprise Mobility Business Case

Practical Return on Investment

Over the years a considerable number of Enterprise Mobility projects failed to get off the ground because of failure to secure project funding due to weak business cases. This article will explore the specifics of practical Return on Investment, including and avoid falling at the first hurdle through a lack of understanding of the expected ROI. It will include suggested methods of calculating this and incorporating it into the ROI calculation.

This guide will explore tangible benefits that can be proved after deployment and how they are achieved. It will then walk through an example, which is based on a real company, and draw conclusions on the benefits that can be confidently used in a business case.

In a process based environment, it is possible to map out your current workflows and create a model of how the implementation of a mobility solution will impact upon these.

Let’s consider some of the features of mobile solutions. Listed below are some of these:

· Remote dynamic data capture
· Vehicle tracking
· Workforce visibility
· Real time status updates
· Workforce reporting
· Spare parts ordering
· Work planning
· Signature capture
· Same day invoicing
· Process compliance
· Dynamic database updates
· Event costing
· Technical data distribution
· Intranet access
· Best practice
· Automatic job closure
· Work audit trail
· Work order/job dispatch
· Health & safety procedures
· Time sheet reporting

These mobility features offer a wide range of benefits, and yes they’re all real. They all offer business improvement; many of them offer cost improvement by reducing fixed overhead or increasing revenue. Many of these benefits are indisputable as contributing to business improvement, but few of them can be absolutely relied upon as part of your business case. Why? Proving their realisation after the project deployment is very difficult. Firstly we must separate these features into those that would benefit your business the most and those that can be measured and therefore provide a tangible return on investment.

So what could be determined as a measurable benefit?

Improved Customer Service
Customers retained equals revenue protected

Better KPIs / performance
Event cost reduced and revenues protected

Efficiency improvements
Fixed overhead reduced

Increase competitive advantage
Increase revenues

Improved data integrity
Administration and re-work costs reduced

Improved workforce moral
Empowered workforce; reduction in training and recruitment costs

Improved management data
Strategic decision making

Above are generic examples of where organisations have recorded tangible benefit, post implementation. There are two factors common to all these examples: Firstly, they’re all incontrovertibly real and make a difference in terms of profitability; but secondly, they are all more or less impossible to put a value against prior to deploying the solution! Having said this, it is my experience that many supporters have tried to implement and met with some severe resistance following boardroom scrutiny. Not that I am suggesting you should ignore any positive change that mobility solutions can bring, however, if measurement is difficult then by all means include these in the business case, but not in your return on investment calculation.

Most businesses target productivity improvement and headcount reduction/refocus through saving minutes-per-case of the remote workforce time. This is a good approach provided that appropriate due diligence is undertaken, see the example below which has in the past caught out many managers.

Example

“So if we remove the necessity for our Inspector to hand write a 15-minute report by providing him with a PDA on which he can collect the same data in 7 minutes, we can create sufficient excess capacity for each Inspector to do one extra job per day!”

Well…maybe, but are you sure you can turn that extra capacity into extra productivity?

Or will your Inspector just go home earlier?

What we need to do for a solid business case is to focus on real, tangible, easily measurable benefit:

Here are some fundamental examples:

Elimination of manual process
Reduction in staff time to complete
Reduction in material overhead (stationary)
Reduction in fuel costs

Reduction in voice telephony (replaced with data)
Reduction in communications costs

Reduced billing cycle
Cash flow improvement

These examples are areas where we can demonstrate a realistic quantitative approach by the production of sufficient incontrovertible evidence to justify the investment – obviously this needs to be a bigger number than the solution’s Total Cost of Ownership! It also needs to give the board confidence that this really is a major step forward in improving the business.

Using this simple but practical process to calculate your own return on investment should assist in securing board funding for your project. So why not start the process today ? However, be aware that once your enterprise mobility project is deployed you will probably be asked to prove you have realised your business case, so make sure you follow through by instigating all your proposed actions of your business plan.