Buyer Conversation: Enterprise Mobility Deployment in an ICT Era

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1 BUYER CASE STUDY Buyer Conversation: Enterprise Mobility Deployment in an ICT Era Adrian Dominic Ho Sherlin Pang IDC OPINION Asia/Pacific Headquarters: 80 Anson Road, #38-00 Singapore P Enterprises are beginning to look at how they can deploy various enterprise mobility solutions within their organization to facilitate a mobile workforce. Some of the benefits of mobility solutions initiatives include lower operation costs, greater staff efficiency, greater customer satisfaction/loyalty, and increased sales effectiveness, which can translate to direct improvement in revenue. IT consumerization, mobile workforce growth, and the proliferation of smart devices have been the main driving forces for enterprise mobility deployment. Organizations have come to terms with it by openly embracing mobility. Productivity outcome driven mobility solutions are generally initiated by business users, as in the case of Borneo Motors. Some pointers that enterprises should consider if they are planning to embark on any enterprise mobility solution within the organization follow: Get a comprehensive list of user requirements. To minimize changes to user requests during implementation, it is important for IT to involve internal stakeholders and scope out users' expectations at an early stage. Mobile security management is important. This continues to be the most serious concern of every IT department when comes to enabling a mobile workforce. Enterprises need to ensure that the solution provider has comprehensive security processes in place to safeguard data/applications residing on the mobile devices and protect sensitive data transmitted across wireless network. Robust service portfolio from provider. While evaluating mobility solution capabilities, enterprises should also evaluate the provider's ability to offer a robust suite of other services that complement its mobility portfolio. Platform used should be flexible and adaptable. As mobility deployment expands to larger scale and across borders, the mobile platform must be able to allow fine-tuning to adapt to local policies and regulatory setting. Cloud option as a delivery option. Enterprises should consider providers that have cloud options for their mobility applications as this ensures greater scalability and agility. Filing Information: March 2012, IDC #AP U, Volume: 1 Asia/Pacific Telecom Operator Strategies: Buyer Case Study

2 IN THIS BUYER CASE STUDY This IDC Buyer Case Study discusses the recent conversation with the senior manager (IS) of Borneo Motors on the company's decision as well as experiences in deploying enterprise mobility solutions in the company. SITUATION OVERVIEW Organization Overview Borneo Motors, a leading car distributor in Singapore, is one of the subsidiaries of UK-based Inchcape Group, a world leading automotive distributor. It was established in 1967 in Singapore and is the lead automotive distributor representing the Toyota, Lexus, and Nino brands. In mid-2011, Borneo Motors embarked on its first enterprise mobility project with a local incumbent, SingTel, for the Singapore office. IDC recently had a conversation with David Jieu, senior manager (IS) of Borneo Motors, to understand the company's initiatives and experiences in embarking the mobility project. As the senior manager of IS, Jieu reports directly to the CIO and is responsible for all IT management and telecom services in the Singapore office and oversees IT infrastructures in its Brunei office as well as all IT-related projects. Challenges and Solution The consumerization of IT and proliferation of tablets in the workplace have been the main reasons why Borneo Motors decided to explore leveraging enterprise mobility solutions within the organization. The company wants to empower its customer-facing staff with anywhere access to corporate data and in-house systems so as to provide faster customer response and improve customer service. The company decided to embark on an ipad project last year and its plan was to roll out Apple ipads with embedded customized applications to its service advisors at the initial stage. The decision to embark on this project was internally driven by end users. The decision to deploy Apple ipads rather than other tablets (or mobile platforms) was a joint decision between the end users and the IS team. The scope of the project involved the development of service/workflow management applications for the ipads, supply of the devices to its service advisors, as well as ongoing support services from its provider. This service/workflow management has also been integrated into their existing customer relationship management (CRM) platform. 2 #AP U 2012 IDC

3 A request for proposal (RFP) was issued to three telecom/mobility solution providers in 2011 for this project. Traditional IT providers were not invited for the RFP. According to Jieu, although telcos are not traditionally regarded as the best of choice for application development and IT management, since this was an ipad or mobile project, the IT decision was to explore the telecom providers first on their enterprise mobility solution offerings, as this was related to networks and supply of smart devices. As this was also a new initiative in the company, the IT/IS department preferred to outsource to a third party rather than deploy in-house, using its own software developers. The main selection criteria to shortlist the potential providers were: The experience, service capabilities, accessibility, and credibility of the application developer that the three bidders brought in as their software development partner; Ability of the provider to offer a holistic solution from hosting, helpdesk support and other services such as mobile device management (MDM); Price/cost of the project; this was an important and initially the main factor for consideration. Although pricing was a priority initially, Borneo Motors placed great emphasis on the accessibility of the application developer and hence, local presence became the overriding factor when making the final decision. The company strongly felt that for the initial rollout phase, if the application developer had local presence, it gave them a higher comfort level, as Borneo Motors believed that it could get better and faster support whenever needed. After the long evaluation process together with its business users, Borneo Motors awarded the S$250,000 contract to the local incumbent, SingTel, which, together with its software development partner Nano Equipment Pte Ltd, will develop the customized service/workflow management applications to be deployed on the ipads. The contract included the supply of up to 100 ipad devices to the service advisors as well as ongoing service management and helpdesk support to users (based on monthly fees). Besides the local presence of its software partner, the other deciding factors included the robustness of the selected provider's service portfolio as well as the initiatives SingTel engaged in the fixed mobile cloud convergence space over the past year. Those initiatives had raised confidence in Borneo Motors that the selected provider is ready for ICT projects and able to take up this ipad project. From a pricing standpoint, Borneo Motors stated that the rival bids were more competitive than SingTel's but several other factors won them over IDC #AP U 3

4 Results The ipad project with its selected provider is still in progress and is expected to be officially implemented in April To date, Borneo Motors has been pleased with the development and engagement process with the provider. A project management team comprising personnel from both SingTel and Nano Equipment has been set up to work together with the company to discuss and develop the applications. Borneo Motors stated that the provider was easy to work with and has been accommodating the numerous user change requests. IT's main challenge in handling this project, interestingly, has been the management of end users' expectations and multiple change requests. As Jieu commented, "the main challenge in this project is managing user requirements and expectations. With consumerization of mobile devices like ipad, users today are more well-versed and informed in mobility applications, resulting in changes in user requirements along the way which will lead to project delays and more investment. It is thus important to get as much end-user requirements as early as possible and phrase out these requirements." The initial objective of this project was to develop a service advisor's tool for improvement to customer engagement. However, as the key objective of a mobility project is to untether the company's front line staff from their desks, bringing touch points closer to the customers, it is crucial that the management and operational tools (such as security and mobile management tools, knowledge base, content management, and support helpdesk) for the devices should be in place as smart devices (smart phones and tablets) tend to generate more incident calls, and typically are higher priorities, than interactions generated from desk-bound devices or laptops. With this in mind, the business objectives and key benchmarks were expanded to incorporate frequently asked questions (FAQ), knowledge base management, and customer surveys. The success of this mobility project will be evaluated based on the ability to enable the service advisors to up-sell additional services to customers and an improved knowledge management capability, including better response rates for its customer service satisfaction surveys. According to Jieu, the company is also exploring other opportunities with the provider, including managed security services on ipad (but is also looking at other mobile platforms) and MDM as well as cloud services. In addition, the organization will be expanding this ipad project to the sales personnel at a later phase if this project is proven successful. 4 #AP U 2012 IDC

5 ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE Advice to Buyers Enterprises are beginning to explore the possibilities of leveraging enterprise mobility solutions in the organization now as a result of a combination of various growing market phenomena (i.e., consumerization of IT, the growing mobile workforce, and proliferation of smart devices especially the media tablets). With growing requests from employees and the top management to support mobile devices (specifically media tablets) for corporate usage, CIOs and IT departments could no longer brush off such requests any longer, arguing on the grounds of data security risk on mobile access. As generation Y slowly accounts for a larger proportion of the workforce, the expectations of this generation is that they will be allowed to bring their own device (BYOD) to the workplace and will only choose to work in establishments that have such policies. Organizations have little choice but to respond to such requests and have to deal with the situation accordingly. The BYOD culture that is taking root across the world poses a series of challenges for many IT managers, including security and manageability, but pervasive mobility can also deliver many tangible benefits to organizations. In productivity outcome based enterprise mobility, business users usually are the initiators while IT tends to assume the role of a facilitator, as users are generally more device savvy and are more familiar with using mobile applications on their smart devices. IT, on the other hand, needs to facilitate communication on policies and risks as well as manage user expectations. Many enterprises are still at the initial stage of exploring mobility solutions and most CIOs are interested in telecom expense management (TEM) to reduce roaming costs. However, with customer centricity and higher revenue generation opportunities being the top business priorities in most organizations now, productivity outcome driven enterprise mobility solutions will become more popular. Enterprises that want to implement any mobility solution within their organization should make sure that they take note of the following: Obtain a detailed list of end-user requirements and have clear objectives at an early stage; Examine the mobility solution provider's overall portfolio that complement the deployment; Make sure that the mobile application partner is accessible and understands the local regulations and policies; The platform used by the provider must be flexible and adaptable to be deployed in other geography or business environment; Robust security defenses; and The solution should allow different delivery options including a cloud option IDC #AP U 5

6 The above check list is elaborated on. Obtain a comprehensive list of end-user requirements and have clear objectives at an early stage. It is necessary to involve all end users at the early stage of the project process and scope out as comprehensive as possible users requests. This will minimize the number of changes or modifications during the implementation process, which can lead to additional investment cost and project delays. IT will also need to balance between the numerous user wish lists and its project budget. Additionally, it is also important that organizations select solution providers that understand their business and the various functions and processes. In the case of Borneo Motors, the objectives of their sales teams were consistent throughout the implementation process. It was about upselling to generate more revenue and knowledge management. The design of the service management applications must be both user-friendly and intuitive for its sales team, so that they can easily access the tools and information needed to up-sell to their customers. In essence, all customization of applications and solutions must be specifically tailored toward the goals of the stakeholders, which must be made very clear from the beginning. Any shift in the goal post of overall objectives can only lead to disappointment in the end. Examine the robustness of provider's overall strength. A holistic and comprehensive service portfolio should be one of the evaluation criteria when selecting an enterprise mobility service provider (SP). Additional services such as hosting, security, managed services, and good cloud services capabilities should be available to complement mobility solutions. Strong service portal capabilities, including the ability to set different user policies, order/provisioning, providing real-time statistics or the ability to incorporate data from other systems (e.g., CRM, supply chain management or SCM, and enterprise resource planning or ERP) and analytical tools should also be considered. While Borneo Motors only picked SingTel for a selected few mobility services, it did mention that it was impressed with the provider's overall vision on mobility and ICT, which had carried a lot of weight in vendor selection. In short, buyers should always go for market leaders or one with extended ICT capabilities. Many organizations might not completely understand the totality of their mobility undertakings, which might be much more grand and complex than initially thought. A full suite ICT provider would be able to plug in some of the holes or missing skills gaps. Ensure application development partner understands the local policies and be accessible to IT staff or end users. In most mobility solution implementations, customized application development is expected and most mobility providers will partner with application developer to go to market together. For single geography deployment, the local presence of the provider and application developer may be preferred to build confidence for initial mobility deployment. For cross-border, multi-country deployment, it may not be possible for the developer to be present in every geography, but proximity to the internal IT team or the stakeholders is important to ensure accessibility and faster response time. More importantly, the partner must understand and able to advise on related local standards, policies, and governance in various geographies. 6 #AP U 2012 IDC

7 Platform used must be flexible and adaptable. Mobility solution deployment may start off in one location/country, but enterprises need to consider any future road map to unite the global/regional workforce with a single approach. The software platform used should be able to adapt to any local policies setting and allow enterprises to fine-tune the applications or platform to comply with local regulations and dynamics. Mobile security management is important. To fully exploit the benefits of enterprise mobility in an organization, mobile employees must be able to access corporate data and customized applications on the go via any self-owned or corporate smart devices. The greatest concern from the IT standpoint is the security of the mobile platform and safeguarding corporate data from theft. The SP must be able to demonstrate its security management capabilities, ensuring data security/protection especially when sensitive data is transacted across wireless networks. Proper governance and guidelines should be set up and this usually involves educating users with strict enforcements. Cloud option will allow scalability. There is perhaps no better time for planning for the future than today. Almost every organization in the region is expanding aggressively and in most cases, usually starts with small pilots for their mobility solutions. With the early success of their pilots, there will be an expanded desire to expand their mobility solutions to other divisions and countries as well. A cloud solution will allow agility and scalability. Buyers should consider SPs that have a cloud option for its mobile solutions/applications as in today's hypercompetitive world, agility has become more critical than ever before, 2012 IDC #AP U 7

8 LEARN MORE Related Research Buyer Conversations: How Asian Enterprises Harness ICT to Deliver Business Outcomes (IDC #AP T, January 2012) Best Practice in Deploying Enterprise Mobility: Key Lessons From Four European Case Studies (IDC #LM57T, November 2011) Copyright Notice This IDC research document was published as part of an IDC continuous intelligence service, providing written research, analyst interactions, telebriefings, and conferences. Visit to learn more about IDC subscription and consulting services. To view a list of IDC offices worldwide, visit Please contact the IDC Hotline at , ext (or ) or [email protected] for information on applying the price of this document toward the purchase of an IDC service or for information on additional copies or Web rights. Copyright 2012 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. All rights reserved. 8 #AP U 2012 IDC