Apps the New Enterprise Mobile Priority: Survey

CIOs and IT managers are getting a handle on Android smartphones and tablets like Apple’s iPad in the workplace, suggests a new study conducted Vanson Bourne and backed by IT management specialists CA Technologies. These days, mobile apps are the next big challenge.

Sixty three percent of the 1,300 worldwide IT managers surveyed for the report identified mobile apps, for employees or customers, as their most pressing priority. By comparison, the device management component of the “bring your own device” (BYOD) movement ranked first for just 37 percent of respondents.

The shift from devices to apps reflects mobility’s effect on IT, said CA Technologies’ Ram Varadarajan, general manager of New Business Innovation. “Mobility has dramatically elevated the complexity of what is needed both for internal users and customer-facing systems,” he said in a statement.

Coming up short on mobile security or delivering a poor mobile experience can be damaging to a business, argued Varadarajan.

Risks include “inadvertent dissemination of corporate information, or negatively impacting brand reputation because of poor customer experience though a mobile application shopping experience,” he said. Over a third of those polled for the study pegged security and privacy as their top challenge.

Overall, the consensus is that mobility is a must-have for business success.

“Nearly all (83 percent) of U.S. respondents recognize a greater need for realizing business opportunities with mobility,” noted CA in company remarks. Respondents that said they were successful with their mobile programs reported a 17 to 24 percent improvement to their businesses, in terms of higher revenues, lower costs and improved productivity, among others benchmarks.

Over the next three years, IT spending on mobility will rise 50 percent, indicated the study, and a good portion of that may go toward satisfying customers. Until now, IT managers largely focused on mobilizing their own employees, but the tide is turning.

A large percentage (42 percent) of respondents said that increased customer demand was the “number one driver of mobility initiatives.” Leveraging mobile technologies to improve the customer experience (33 percent) and customer support (26 percent) also ranked high.

Despite the progress being made by enterprises, stumbling blocks remain. The study identified budget constraints, a lack of skilled personnel and a multitude of mobile platforms as the main hurdles that are holding mobile adoption in some organizations.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020