At the Computing Magazine Enterprise Mobility and Application Management 2015 Summit a few weeks ago, Allergan’s IT chief Wei Wang told attendees that introducing enterprise mobility into the enterprise is less about impressing stakeholders with technology and far more about proving use cases.
“A big challenge,” Wang said, “has been convincing the business that mobility delivers value.” This is especially difficult because of regulatory obstacles in the pharmaceutical sector. Wang found success selling mobility with use cases like increased digital interaction by the sales force, which believes in large part that only direct personal contact with a customer is effective.
It’s no surprise that regulations in healthcare make enterprise mobility a serious undertaking. We’ve seen first-hand how frustrating regulation-laden mobile apps can be. It’s no wonder that employees would opt to go back to more traditional communication methods when they have to navigate a clunky system that could easily be improved while still remaining secure.
Wang’s idea of selling enterprise mobility with use cases and not novelty may be based in the difficult healthcare environment, but it’s worth building off of.
We know that boards and other decision-makers at companies don’t want novelty. Or at least, novelty isn’t enough to sell them on a new, large investment. (Is “Everyone’s going mobile, and we should too!” really a compelling argument? No.) But we’ll take Wang’s idea about use cases and move it one step forward. You should be selling mobility to your board with ROI, not novelty.
Use cases and specifics are good; telling company stakeholders that mobile sales apps can increase productivity is much better than saying, “We need to go mobile.” But ROI is better. The ideal scenario would be running a small test and showing key decision-makers how well the mobility program worked—how many users engaged with the app, how much time it saved, how productivity increased, and what bang they got for their buck.
Even if you don’t have a test case to build off of, it’s immensely more useful to come armed with a plan for tracking ROI than it is to sell on novelty, or even specific use cases. Don’t just tell your board that you’re planning on helping salespeople be more productive. Tell them that you have a way to monitor analytics that will help you determine the ROI of your apps.
All the decision-makers we’ve ever talked to have been delighted by the prospect of having hard data to base future decisions off of. Your argument for enterprise mobility can only be made stronger with data on your side.
When selling mobility to your board or anyone else, don’t sell on novelty. Sell on ROI.
