This post is the last in a three-part series on building a mobility strategy within the enterprise. To read part one, click here. To read part two, click here.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve spent a good bit of time talking through the basics of building a mobility strategy. Central to our discussion thus far have been two ideas: your apps should have an operational focus, and you need to treat your enterprise apps like commercial app builders do (that is, you must market them internally).
The final key to building your mobility strategy, one that we’ve only touched on thus far, is something that seems counterintuitive: you should ignore some of your employees.
Okay, so perhaps “ignore” is too strong a word. But the central idea remains: to maximize the impact of your enterprise mobility program, you must start with a small group of users (employees) who need mobile functionality the most. If you try to be all things to all people, you will soon realize that 1, maintaining an entire fleet of apps is difficult, and 2, financially, it probably doesn’t make much sense to support apps in all areas of the business.
After following steps 1 and 2 in our strategy series–setting an operational focus and thinking about how to market your apps–you will most likely find that the apps you build will focus on a small handful of functions, and have a small, but dedicated group of users. This is okay. Resist the urge to build applications just for the sake of “going mobile.” Focusing on one or two core operational business functions, and ensuring the users of apps in those areas are happy, is an excellent way to build a foundation for long-term mobility success.
Instead of thinking about this as “ignoring your employees,” or at least some of them, think about it instead as giving help to those employees who need it most.
Your mobility strategy should be built around producing the most positive business impact possible. If that means having to be selective about which apps get built, who for, and when, well, we’d consider that a pretty good tradeoff.
