White Paper

for business mobile•

•The best of times

In the mid-nineteenth century Charles Dickens penned classic works like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby which have transcended the ages and even form part of the national curriculum today. By comparison, when we remember that the first mobile phone in the UK was sold in 1984 it is the pace of change today that makes it feel like ancient history. The size of a brick and had a battery life of 30 minutes it was the beginning of our love affair with the mobile phone. Today the UK is a ‘smartphone society’, according to Ofcom². Two thirds of us now own one and it’s become the hub through which we conduct our daily lives - it’s been described as ’life’s remote control‘. As 4G becomes increasingly pervasive, providing faster online access, people will demand devices that allow them to combine their personal and work lives.

For these reasons, mobility has moved from being a satellite of the IT department to the forefront of enterprise innovation. 97% of CIOs have high hopes for what mobile can do for their businesses, with 51% citing it as ‘important’ and 46% saying that it’s ‘critical’³. And it is not just a company’s IT Department where the tangible benefits of true mobility are being assessed. It is generally accepted in this day and age that companies who offer employees flexible working have lower staff turnover, deliver greater productivity and have more motivated and engaged employees. It can also prove a major factor in the attraction of new talent to a business – Deloitte, for example, sees its agile working programme as a key differentiator when engaging with job candidates.

While companies with progressive mobility policies may look to take the credit for the uptake in remote working, it is in fact employees themselves that are driving the demand for greater mobility. The appearance of trends like Bring Your Own Everything (BYOx) and Shadow IT are indications of the demand that end users have to consume the services that they want and need, on the device they choose, in the location that is convenient to them. In other words, they need to be ‘always on’.

Since IBM launched the first desktop computer in the early 1980s, pundits have been saying that the office will soon be history and it appears that UK workers think so too, thanks to mobile telephony. Only 14 per cent of UK workers want to work in a traditional office in the future, according to a report by PwC4. The desire to work in a virtual place where people can log on from any location or use collaborative work spaces is growing as the establishment of teams for specific tasks becomes part of everyday working life. This need is only going to get stronger and with the constant evolution of devices, software, connectivity and infrastructure, this means new and increasingly challenging demands will be made of a CIO and his/her team. If a business is to maximise the potential that mobility can bring, it will also need to make sure that the internal processes that underpin an organisation keep pace in the digital world of the future, as the workforce awakens to new possibilities

The best of times…

So how does a company’s CIO or IT decision-maker set out on the path to effective business mobility? Whether you are only at the start of your mobility journey, or moving to mobile maturity, this paper is designed to help you explore the six stages of mobility:

1. Our Mutual Friend Developing a progressive strategy

2. Hunted Down Adopting a mobility-first mind-set

3. The Old Curiosity Shop Love the apps but be vigilant

4. Hard Times Ensure your software, policies and processes are fit for purpose

5. The Long Voyage The world keeps changing; change with it

6. Great Expectations Be sure to communicate the Return on Investment

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself” 1

– Charles Dickens, The Lamplight er

1: Charles Dickens, The Lamplighter 2013, Stage Door. 2: Ofcom - The Communications Market 2015. 3. Kinvey, Enterprise Mobility Survey 20144: PwC Future of Work report 2014.

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The demands being placed on organisations are evolving. The fluidity of the modern workplace and the proliferation of mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets and the hybrid ‘phablet’ means that unless the needs of end users and work departments needs are taken into consideration, they will find a way to do what they need and want anyway. With many companies struggling to keep tabs on the mobile devices that its staff are using to carry out work tasks, it exposes an organisation to all sorts of different risks and creates a landscape of disunity and confusion. One in three organisations do not have a formal mobile strategy as yet5. It is this lack of organisational consensus that will hold a business back in terms of productivity and staff satisfaction, as well as opening up the whole enterprise to significant risk.

So how can you start to address these challenges? There is an argument that mobility should form part of a Unified Communications (UC) strategy, a desktop infrastructure strategy or a cloud strategy, but this isn’t a very productive approach. What matters is that a company’s CIO must be empowered to go beyond what issues may be present in the here and now and create a progressive strategy for mobility that is applicable across the whole organisation. In other words, it is about bringing others on the mobility journey with you, even those that are not directly associated with IT decision-making. This can be achieved through:

Creating a centre of excellenceThis is a group that makes business needs and IT specialisms converge. This cross-organisational group needs to focus on how mobility can provide more than just a time or cost saving – important though they are – but rather how it improves an organisation for its employees and, therefore, its customers, as well as accelerating business development.

Super profilingEssentially this is building up a detailed picture of the habits and usage trends of your end users – it’s not sexy but by defining roles and the specific requirements of those roles, you will identify the necessity and opportunity in your workforce. This should go further than just capturing employee location – it should encompass any governance requirements surrounding their role through to the applications and services that they need to fulfil their role.

BYOxForget BYOD – that’s so yesterday. We are now entering the land of BYOx. The likelihood is that it is already happening in your organisation – you are just not aware of it. BYOx is not going away anytime soon and you will need to strike a balance between trying to enforce a complete ban, because you won’t succeed, and the ‘anything goes’ approach. For example, embracing a 3x3 development programme for corporate applications and deploying an Enterprise Management System (EMS) can cut the risk of BYOx and bring it into your service offerings.

1. Developing a progressive strategy

Practical tips:• Get cross-business buy-in and, importantly, input

• Profile your users

• Consider the impact other strategies will have on mobility – e.g. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), UC, wireless networking

• Deploy an Enterprise Management System (EMS) to cut the risk of BYOx and bring it into your service offerings

“No one is useless in this world…who lightens the burden of it for anyone else” 4

– Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

4: Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend 2002, Modern Library. 5: Kinvey, State of Enterprise Mobility Survey. 2014.

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The mobile-first mind set is essentially the default position of the world, so why should businesses be any different? That doesn’t just apply to IT departments either but across all aspects of an organisation. As the percentage of an organisation’s Gen Y employees continues to grow, so does the familiarity and dependence on smartphones, tablets and cloud-based computing services. This means that implementing mobility into a business is no longer just about providing employees with devices or providing remote access to the email server. This requires a fundamental shift in the mindset of an organisation to effectively ‘future-proof’ the business for what might lie ahead – and no-one knows exactly where we might end up.

SpeedTaking a mobility-first mindset will make it easier for organisations to adapt their working practices according to the ever-changing needs of the mobile workforce, rather than seeing mobility as a bolt-on where you are constantly playing catch up. The aim is to be proactive, rather than reactive, to mobile trends. For example, 5G is coming over the hill and it’s not too far in the distance – you do not want to be in a position where you just get your business to a position to take advantage of 4G, before the next big buzzword is upon you.

HybridsAnother example is the growing popularity of the ‘phablet’, a larger, more powerful version of a mobile that boasts significantly better battery life. These devices have the potential to replace the laptop or desktop. The larger unit is proving to be popular for a number of reasons, including a more ergonomic virtual keyboard in a world where traditional keyboards are increasingly disappearing. More importantly, however, is that more physical space means manufacturers can build in more powerful specifications – a powerful spec means that businesses must provide mobile apps and services for employees that reflect this and take full advantage of it.

Adopting a mobility-first mindset also enables you to better target and engage with partners, setting apart those that can truly help an organisation meet their mobility-driven business goals.

2. Adopting a mobility-first mind-set

Practical tips:• Assess where mobile sits within your IT strategies

• Consolidate your partners to those who can really deliver today and more importantly have a well-thought out view of the future to help you meet your business goals

“A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door” 6

– Charles Dickens, Hunt ed Down

6: Charles Dickens, Hunted Down 2004, Quiet Vision Pub

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“Anything that makes a noise is satisfactory to a crowd” 7

– Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

Security is the major challenge when it comes to mobile deployments within an organisation. People’s reliance on their phone or tablet plus the frequency with which they use them makes them uniquely vulnerable to cybersecurity threats.

Stolen devices were the top security concern in as many as 78 per cent of organisations, according to a recent InformationWeek UK survey. The research also revealed that 45 per cent of firms had an incident of data loss within the past 12 months8.

Open doorsOrganisations may have security policies but do they communicate them well enough or strongly enough? How many of us can resist the lure of free WiFi in ae coffee shop or the hotel room? CIOs may be worried about mobile malware, viruses or spyware but their Mobile Device Management has to be up to the job when all of the top 100 paid-for Android apps and 56 per cent of the top 100 paid-for Apple iOS apps have been hacked, according to security firm, Arxan Technologies9. Third-party app stores are often unvetted and applications submitted to these stores may be pirated, tampered with, or contain malicious code. It’s generally a much less-regulated environment where “shadier” apps can exist unchecked.

Companies with successful mobile strategies tend to involve corporate security staff early in strategy development, embed security as a core component of the mobile architecture, and develop clear mobile policies that balance user demand with security requirements.

PackagedAs packaged mobile apps are becoming much more robust and are proving their usefulness, the organisations that recognise the competitive advantage that being mobile-first can offer will be looking to develop custom mobile apps that are tailored to their specific needs and can be integrated with other systems. What has powered the mobile revolution is an ever-increasing set of cloud-based applications that allow users to access their content, regardless of the storage capacity of their devices. Cloud-based enterprise applications give people access to business-critical resources such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data and Enterprise Resource Planning, (ERP).

3 x 3 futureYou will need to take into account the three key platforms (Android, iOS, Windows) and the three key architectures (native, hybrid and mobile web) in any strategy you form.

3. Love the apps but be vigilant

Practical tips:• Do your key line of business systems

have pre-built apps available? Are these apps available on the 3 key platforms: iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. Is this a ‘deal breaker’ if they are not?

• Engage your in-house experts if you are developing your own apps. Little things like battery drain or data usage, can degrade employee productivity rather than have the desired positive effect.

7: Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop 2001, Penguin Classics8: InformationWeek UK, How Mobile Security Lags BYOD 20139: Arxan Technology: State of Application Security Report 2014

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The critical elements of a resilient business mobility system are:

• Mobile Device Management

• Mobile Asset Management

• App Wrapping

• Containerisation

• Enterprise File Sync and Sharing (EFSS)

It’s Mobile Device Management (MDM) that makes business mobility and BYOx possible. It lets organisations provide employees with access to the internal networks using a device of their choice, whilst these devices are managed remotely. All MDM products are built around containerisation. The MDM container is secured using latest crypto techniques. All corporate data like email, documents and enterprise applications are encrypted and processed inside the container. This ensures that corporate data is separated from a user’s personal data on the device. There are currently 160 MDM products on the market. Obviously there will be consolidation within the number of MDM products but you need to take professional advice to ensure you select the most effective one.

Today’s mobile devices are valuable because of the data they hold and they need to be protected. Anything you can do to protect this asset or maximize its value is worth looking into. Asset and inventory management has to be more than just an asset database; an enterprise’s mobile device management solution should support provisioning and initial set-up, warranty and RMA process, as well as a replacement and upgrade policy.

For initial provisioning, determining the corporate policy for each type of device and how to initially track and manage the asset is vital. If an organisation pays for the device, the asset belongs to the company; so it must set clear expectations regarding proper use and data policies. At this point, having access to ‘find my phone’ features and the device memory wiping should be key discussions for your corporate policy. Since the phone can store company data and employee personal data, remote wiping should at minimum include erasing the stored company data. This can be done via sandbox apps and programs that partition the phone’s memory. Also, misplaced phones should have some tracking ability to try and recover them.

Managing the device through its daily use requires support. From a management standpoint, this will be through the monthly cost in usage and the warranty support for broken devices. Using an asset management tool that tracks the devises IMEI, serial number etc. will ensure a much faster turnaround when you need servicing. Also, tracking the Return to Manufacturer Authorization (RMA) process and the vendor response time will allow you to evaluate the vendor’s performance and service level.

People will always want the latest and best device. Asset lifecycle tracking and a clear replacement policy ensures the company only updates devices when necessary, and at scheduled intervals. The replacement policy should replace a lost, stolen, or damaged device with one of equivalent capabilities (not necessarily the latest version) and possibly charge a replacement fee. You don’t want people breaking their perfectly good devices just get an early upgrade…

If you set good policies in the provisioning, warranty and RMA, with practical replacement and upgrade phases, and support them with a good mobile inventory management programme, you can get the most value from these assets and protect your company data.

4. Ensure your software, policies and processes are fit for purpose

“There is a wisdom of the head, and... there is a wisdom of the heart” 10

– Charles Dickens, Hard Times

10: Charles Dickens, Hard Times 2003, Pearson Longman

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App wrapping allows a mobile application management administrator to set specific policy elements that can be applied to an application or group of applications. Policy elements can include such things as whether or not user authentication is required for a specific app, whether or not data associated with the app can be stored on the device and whether or not specific APIs such as copy and paste or file sharing will be allowed.

In enterprise, app wrapping allows an administrator to take an application, associate extra security and management features with it and redeploy it as a single containerised program in an enterprise app store.

It’s possible to enforce security such as authentication, encryption, data leakage, cut-and-paste restrictions and selective content wiping through various types of container technologies.

Your protection strategies should address cloud storage. The ability to store and share files in the cloud can provide a major boost in productivity, and having users collaborate on a single copy of a document solves annoying version-control problems. What’s more, having access to that information anywhere, anytime and on any device allows people to work in whatever way is most productive for them.

However, an enterprise mobility management (EMM) system must have the security, scalability and feature sets that meet the organisation’s requirements. Reliability and bandwidth of the network must be good.

It’s important to have a clear idea about what you’ll need in an EFSS service before you go shopping because each one offers a different mix of features. Will your cloud storage need to integrate with on premise storage? What types of storage devices will it interface with? Will each user simply need his or her own storage, or is file sharing and collaboration a requirement? Will you need to synchronise files among a number of remote offices?

Security capabilities should be high on the list of questions to ask potential EFSS suppliers. Also, if the storage is cloud-based, users will depend on your network connectivity to get access. If a network is already overloaded, adding storage access may push it over the edge.

Practical tips:• Evaluate your security policies in the light of a

mobile world

• What’s your software approach going to be?

• Evaluate your asset management system

• Have a clear idea what you want from an EFSS service

• Is your network up to the task?

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Practical tips:• Create a timeline to evaluate and

reassess your mobile strategy

• Consolidate your supply chain to maximise impact and mitigate risks

So, as you have probably gleaned from this paper, times have changed and, more importantly, they will continue to change. All aspects of mobility are evolving all the time, from the development of new devices such as phablets and wearables, through to improved superfast connectivity infrastructure and the emergence of 5G. No-one can ever be certain of where things are going to go next. The important thing to remember is, even if you implement the previous four steps, that is not the end. The demands of your employees will continue to change and your mobility strategy needs to be able to flex with it. This emphasises the importance of implementing a mobility strategy that is ‘future-proof’ and is able to adapt to the changing environment at different stages of the lifecycle as it happens, rather than being a separate project each time. Your mobility strategy should remain under constant review, while also ensuring that your partners remain fit for purpose in terms of having the capabilities and expertise to deliver on your strategy.

5. Don’t rest on your laurels – the world keeps changing

“I stand upon a sea-shore, where the waves are years. They break and fall… but, with every wave the sea is rising” 11

– Charles Dickens, The Long V oyage

11: Charles Dickens, The Long Voyage 2007, Living Times World Literature

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Practical tips:• Decide “what good looks like”

• Evaluate soft (user experience, customer satisfaction) and hard goals (money saved, time saved)

• Build a budget based on your overall strategy – move away from seeing mobile as just a commodity

We talked earlier about getting buy-in from your colleagues, both inside and outside the IT department for an organisation’s mobility strategy. One of the obvious ways to deliver on this is demonstrating a clear Return on Investment (ROI) of implementing such a programme. ROI has become an integral part of any form of evaluation in the modern organisation and IT is no different.

The big question is – do you use hard, more tangible metrics to measure ROI, such as the impact on sales and productivity of a mobile approach or softer metrics, such as customer satisfaction. In our view, both are important metrics to consider in order to get a complete picture of ROI. Historically, sales and marketing has largely led the way in demonstrating ROI of mobility, through the development of apps that can be used for customer presentations, as well as improving the efficiency of the sales process by offering instant orders, for example.

In order to measure this ROI, organisations need to know what they want to get out of business mobile. What do they want to achieve through the implementation of a mobility strategy? Is it greater sales? Is it greater productivity? Is it an improvement in staff retention levels? Is it an increase in the level of engagement sales staff have with customers? It is important to establish your objectives from the outset.

Naturally the costs of the actual devices and connectivity vary but include infrastructure costs with technical components such as Mobile Device Management, expanded email capacity, and help desk support. Application costs will differ greatly, depending on the number and type of applications and the way they are enabled for mobile.

Businesses can manage their costs by focusing application investment on the user groups that create most value while tiering the levels of services depending on the role each employee has.

6. Be sure to communicate the Return on Investment – what does good look like?

“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth” 12

– Charles Dickens, Great Expectat ions

12: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations 1998, Oxford University Press

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© 2016 Daisy Group. All rights reserved.BMWP/03/16

EpilogueYour mobile strategy and your success in implementing it is a critical element in creating a work environment that will deliver your business real, measurable competitive advantage. It has the potential to deliver innovation in a range of areas from operations to logistics, CRM to human resources and ultimately increased returns.

You are now dealing with the ‘business consumer’ — an employee for whom business activities are part of an overall digital lifestyle. Earlier in this paper we discussed how CIOs and IT decision makers (ITDMs) have to respond to the challenge of BYOx where employees drive changes to working practices. Businesses will have to have a more consumer-like computing environment. It‘s called the digital workplace, although for the CIO and the ITDM it might be better known as the digital battlefield.

Not only will the mobile strategy have to support multiple platforms and meet the needs of multiple users but it will also have to integrate applications with the back end and build an architecture that is both device-agnostic and secure.

You will have to build in flexibility to respond to changes in your external markets and new technologies as they emerge, but the ultimate challenge is how to maintain control while allowing business departments and their staff more freedom of choice. It’s clear that IT and the business have to work together to achieve this balance, but it is a real test and one where you need the support of consultants who have and are working with many different businesses who have faced the same demanding circumstances but the benefits will be transformational.

Next Steps

To find out more, contact us on:

0344 863 3000

enquiry.dcs@daisygroup.com

Or if you’re an existing customer, get in touch with your account manager directly.

“We forge the chains we wear in life” 13

– Charles Dickens, The Cricket on t he Heat h

13: Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Heath 2013, A Word to the Wise