A recent article by Dmitri Tcherevik of Enterprise Apps Tech explores an interesting concept: an enterprise mobility maturity model.
As Tcherevik notes, several studies, like SAP/ASUG’s Mobility Benchmarking Study, point to a correlation between the performance of a company and its maturity in the area of enterprise mobility. Companies with high enterprise mobility maturity demonstrate higher revenue growth and better operating margins.
Of course, as we all learned in school, correlation does not always equal causation. There are likely other things at play in enterprises with high mobility maturity that influence their success. Even so, what’s most interesting about Tcherevik’s insight here is his mobility maturity model with three different phases listed below: aware, reactive, and proactive.
If you’d like, you can read Tcherevik’s full descriptions of the different phases in the article here. The graphic above, however, does a good job of summing up the three phases.
At this point, most companies likely fall somewhere along the spectrum between aware and reactive. Fortunately, it’s somewhat rare these days for companies to have no mobility strategy whatsoever. At the same time, it’s also somewhat rare for companies to have a clearly articulated strategy and dozens of custom applications. Again, the average enterprise lies somewhere in those first two phases.
So why does all of this matter?
Even if enterprise mobility maturity doesn’t lead directly to the revenue growth and better operating margins outlined by Tcherevik, there are still many reasons to develop a robust mobility strategy, included increased productivity, streamlined process, informed app development, and more. All of which, we might add, do position a company better for success in the long run.
As more and more companies get on board the enterprise mobility parade, one final thing to note about these phases is that there’s no reason a company couldn’t jump directly from the aware phase to the proactive phase. While that would take careful planning and proper vendor support, it’s entirely possible to go from a BYOD policy only to a robust strategy with custom apps and proper management. Unsurprisingly, that’s exactly what we’d recommend.
Take a look at the criteria outlined in Tcherevik’s graph and assess how mature your company is in its enterprise mobility strategy. If you find yourself looking more like an aware company than that of a reactive or proactive one, it’s likely time that you start thinking about developing a better mobility program.
