Ping Pong for Enterprise Mobility
Over the course of my time running this blog, as well as my time as a research analyst covering the space of enterprise mobility, I have had the pleasure of meeting scores of companies and hundreds of people who are as passionate as I am about what mobility can do for the enterprise. One of those organizations is a Canadian company called Analystik.
The team over at Analystik reached out to me to see if we could start a little debate around productivity gains from enterprise mobility. A ping pong match if you will. Now sure, they might speak a funny kind of French over there (sorry, being born in Paris, I just couldn't help myself), but I'm always game to debate the merits of enterprise mobility. So here it goes...
Last week, Analystik posted this blog entry en Francais. Parlez-vous Francais? Non? Well, here's a Google translation for you.
The folks at Analystik make some interesting points, but (obviously) I need to challenge many of them. They start off by talking about the role of the CIO. So first of all, only a small portion of all the organizations in this world actually have a CIO. Sure, a CIO per se will exist primarily in large enterprises, but let's even think about the concept of the CIO. Heads of IT still predominantly run the tech side of the company, and are NOT involved anywhere near as much as they should in the BUSINESS side of life. This whole concept has been well document in the ITIL framework, as well as the concept of IT Service Management (ITSM). That said, it doesn't happen anywhere near as frequently as it should. Also, there's a difference between IT supporting the business decision making process and IT making business decisions (don't get me started on that front).
Analystik is correct though to point out that mobility tools are not yet well integrated into IT. Part of the blame is due to the fact that so many people bring their own devices into the enterprise - call it the consumerization of enterprise mobility. This is a HUGE problem as far as I am concerned. I'm one of those who believe that organizations should be providing their employees the devices that have been approved for corporate use. This is part of Wireless Expense Management 101 (and Enterprise Mobility Management for that matter). If companies aren't willing to create these white lists, then at the very least, they should have a black list of what can and can not connect to data behind the firewall.
So this brings me to my major qualm in their piece. Why is IT still developing the metrics that are used to gauge the success of a mobility deployment? If these devices are billed as providing productivity gains for corporations, there is (typically) way more non-IT staff than folks in the IT department. The line of business people should be the ones determining what the appropriate business metrics are....hell, they're the ones who most likely are asking for the mobile devices and applications (beyond just email and calendaring) in the first place!
If you believe in the business benefits that mobility solutions can provide an enterprise (or even a small business for that matter), then you should have the business people figure that out IN CONJUNCTION WITH the IT department. This is IT Service Management....where the IT department, as Wikipedia puts it, is "philosophically centered on the customer's perspective of IT's contribution to the business." The faster organizations can look at how mobility is more about the business value than the technology impact (which I am not neglecting), the faster will mobility help deliver on those promises.
Think about it...
Dear Philippe, you sure have your own style which, I must admit, I enjoy. I think you’ll like the fact that Michel and I do not fully agree on this one.
As far as CIO is concerned, I would point out that more and more medium enterprises have CIOs but you are right nevertheless; there’s a huge difference between IT supporting the business decision making process and IT making business decisions. I would argue tough that this difference is a matter of business culture; in enterprises where IT has moved to a strategic role, the CIO is usually a key player in the business decision process.
Moreover, I would hypothesize that within such a business culture, Business Execs (Sales and Marketing Execs, for example) would initiate the request for more productive mobility tools and that the CIO (IT being well integrated with strategic planning) would be calling for a shift from “consumerization to standardization”.
As to your final point, I couldn’t agree more: “...The line of business people should be the ones determining what the appropriate business metrics are... IN CONJUNCTION WITH the IT department”... since they’re the ones who requested such tools in the first place, they must have had some objectives in mind; hence the metrics!!!
And if the appropriate “business culture” for such cooperative efforts to happen is not in place; well, just have IT people take a good look at one of the latest Smartphones. I think they’ll want to get involved or at least, start a conversation... Now, as for the appropriate business culture, that's a question of leadership and well, it's a totally different story!!!
Posted by: Denis Paul van Chestein | 22 October 2008 at 16:29
Hello Philippe.
You're right about "CIO", we should used the term "IT Manager" to include most business sizes (SMB). But considering the experience I’ve had with some clients and the fact that corporate objectives are often attained thanks to IT expertise, I think the IT Manager not only has but must be business-minded to really understand the corporate objectives.
We both agree on the fact that mobility tools are not well, if at all, integrated with IT. You bring up the problematic situation where people bring their own devices to the enterprise. I'll be even more categorical, employees shouldn't be allowed at all to do business with their personal phone or email address. What will happen when they'll leave the business? That's a major concern!
As to the core of this post, metrics, I like the idea to include the business people in the process of determining the appropriate metrics to measure the contribution of mobility tools to productivity but, and I insist, just "include" them in the process. Their role / expertise in the organization is not about getting metrics which can be a pretty long process to implement; I doubt they would have time for that unless the enterprise is willing to pay them doing just that. If within an organization, IT is not confined to “just supporting” the business decision process and IT objectives are well aligned with corporate objectives, as it should be, then IT should understand which metrics are significant to the business people, be responsible of implementing those metrics and training users on these new mobility tools (both functionality wise and productivity wise (we all have experienced the annoying employee answering an email during a meeting)).
Posted by: Michel Martel | 22 October 2008 at 16:33