If you can recall the early days of the Internet, you’ll remember how its impact was all-encompassing. Seemingly overnight, a new enabling technology swept in to reshape the way people worked and lived. The Internet also created a challenging new role for CIOs. Suddenly, they had to determine how to integrate a powerful but complex new technology into existing infrastructure and find ways to help businesses use the Internet for competitive advantage.

Today, businesses are in the midst of another company-wide IT transformation. This one is spawned by mobile Web growth. With the number of Web users worldwide at 1.2 billion and growing, marketplace demand for access to mobile applications and content is compressing company IT innovation cycles. Instead of reviewing their IT strategy every 12 to 18 months, companies must now review it every six to 12 months to ensure they are keeping pace with new developments and placing their bets on the right trends.

To delve into the current state of global enterprise mobility, Accenture conducted an online survey with 240 IT CIOs and other C-suite IT professionals in a dozen countries. In one of the most significant findings, two-thirds said mobility will impact their businesses as much as or more than the Internet did in the 1990s. And when asked about their plans for mobility, far more IT professionals in emerging markets (94 percent) are making mobility a higher priority and spending more money on achieving that goal than are their counterpart in mature markets (55 percent). 

We also took a close look at the adoption of enterprise mobility across various regions and industries. That’s when we identified several challenges that all companies encounter as they look to develop a cogent strategy around mobility in the workplace.

Not surprisingly, the IT professionals surveyed across all regions targeted cost and security as top concerns that could potentially thwart efforts to implement a clear-cut enterprise mobility plan. Approximately half of the respondents in the survey cited security as the leading factor preventing them from addressing their mobile priorities; cost and budget came in second (43 percent). More than one-quarter (26 percent) cited either interoperability with current systems or a lack of understanding about the benefits of mobility as potential roadblocks.  

These same IT professionals are also concerned over whether to focus on consumer (B2C) or employee (B2B) applications in light of the fragmented market with different mobile platforms and devices. Above all, this fragmentation makes it hard for companies to accommodate employee-owned devices that run applications of choice, which can ultimately stretch IT resources way beyond capacity.

Despite the myriad challenges and hurdles, our research indicates that companies recognize the value that mobility can bring to the enterprise and are moving aggressively to embrace it just as they did the Internet fifteen years ago. To hone their strategies, CIOs and their IT counterparts must take a multi-pronged approach that includes three fundamental elements:    

 - Address issues around technology, platform choice and development tools. A good place to start is by asking if you are going to internally standardize on one device, or encourage the “bring your own device” (BYOD) concept. Then, understand where in the organization developers are creating mobility applications, develop a list of the projects underway and then clarify associated goals. Given the strong commitment that respondents in emerging markets have toward mobile solutions, it may even prove to be more advantageous to make mobile solutions available to employees in other countries, and verify that they are localized properly. 

 - Keep business requirements at the forefront. While this may seem obvious, it has sometimes been overlooked. IT professionals must remember that enterprises and consumers alike now live on “mobile time,” with information coming in from all directions, through always-connected devices. To get a clear understanding and create a strong foundation, they must focus on the aspects of mobility that best serve their business requirements, and recalibrate them periodically as they justify the required mobile-related expenditures.

 - Pay attention to management and oversight. Mobility is bringing about new conversations on how to manage mobility in the enterprise and compete as the Web-based world grows. It’s important that CIOs and IT professionals maintain strong strategic oversight to tweak their strategy if and when warranted, as conditions shift.  Such an effort requires identifying future projects and identifying current projects and confirming they are moved toward your ultimate goals.

A final word

Thanks to the Internet, technology is central to nearly every major business decision. To manage mobility and compete as the Web-based world grows, IT professionals must understand where, within their organization, developers are creating mobile applications, so they can be integrated into a cohesive strategy. This involves developing a comprehensive list of mobility projects that are under way and clarifying associated goals; accelerating projects by standardizing them; and then innovating to create competitive ad¬vantage. As with the challenges involved in harnessing the Internet to help improve business, winners in the transformation to enterprise mobility will be those companies whose leaders trust their IT professionals as collaborators in transforming the way business is conducted. 

Dan Lauderback is managing director, Accenture Mobility Services.