In modern business, going mobile is the key to success

Mobile technologies are transforming enterprises, industries and the world.
Much more than their global peers, chief information officers of Chinese business-to-consumer enterprises include targeted promotions, social sharing and access to content for customers as features in their mobility strategies. Looking at the enterprise side, Chinese chief information officers include features such as mobile-device management, collaboration and knowledge-sharing in their mobility strategies to a larger extent than the average chief information officer globally.
However, Chinese enterprises must overcome a number of challenges before realizing the full efficiency, cost, or revenue potential that a mobility-enabled business brings, including allocating mobility budgets to the highest-priority initiatives, deploying applications that have a big visual impact to attract and retain customers and strengthening the governance of the mobility strategy across business units.
Companies are rightly giving priority to high-value initiatives in select functional areas. For instance, we see sales units launching tablet-based sales toolkits to unleash the sales force, or executive suites deploying mobile management dashboards. However, if attention is not focused on a unified platform to support the strategy, the value propositions of new technology adoption will slow down because of disparate tools, data repositories and governance processes. That will mean extra costs and effort later to get the most from mobility technology and the strategic outcome.
We are also seeing the silo effect in other cases, where economics and mobility are disconnected in Chinese enterprises. Their projects aimed at reducing costs and improving efficiency remain largely traditional and are undervaluing the additional, and sometimes substantial, supply chain, field service and office automation benefits that can be enabled by mobile technologies.
To highlight the disparity of China versus other nations, our findings show that Chinese enterprises are lagging behind when it comes to creating customer-facing applications - those that drive revenue through customer engagement or transactions - and developing new mobility-focused marketing channels.


Source: China Daily
Time: 2013-07-15