Mobilizing the Enterprise

I spend a lot of time talking to people about the mobile enterprise. Sometimes it’s people I work with, or friends who work at other companies, over twitter, or just people who reach out to ask a question or two about mobilizing their company. A lot of these questions tend to focus on BYOD (Bring your own device) initiatives and other want to talk about how to do apps on mobile devices. The good news is people are getting smarter and some are starting to ask the right questions. The bad news is, too many haven’t even figured out that there are questions to ask.

A lot of these questions are about enabling the enterprise on a mobile device, where they are talking smart phones or tablets. More than likely it is due to a new initiative of the CTO, which is the first problem. The second part of the initiative is usually about saving money. Then, inevitably, they start to think about security and securing the mobile devices. There we have the three things that are likely to doom any initiative to failure. The real question is how do we go about succeeding.

1. Define the business need

There has to be a reason to go mobile. It can’t be because it’s the latest shiny new thing. You have to be solving a business problem. To be fair, the IT department is part of the business and can have their own problems to solve, but in the end, IT has to understand the business need.

2. Partner with the business

Have you heard the story of the 6 blind men and the elephant? They all touch a different part of the elephant and think it is a different thing. It isn’t enough to just get the requirements from the business and then build a solution. You have to make the business a part of the process when you create the solution to make sure that it meets their needs.

3. Partner with security

Any solution that you build has to be secure. How secure depends on what the solution is doing and what type of data and regulations are involved. The worst thing you can do is wait until your solution is built to bring security in because they will undoubtedly want changes.

4. Focus on the users

Whether we are talking about creating an app or putting together a BYOD program, if you don’t focus on the users you will soon find that they don’t want to use your solution. When you are creating an app, the quickest way for it to turn into a crapplication is to forget about the users and instead build a solution in an IT vacuum based upon what you think users want.

5. Whatever you think the costs are, double them

While it may seem simple to code an app, the first time you do it you will make mistakes. Your development team will make a mistake, you ignored some of the previous tenets, you forgot to test it…it really doesn’t matter, until you become good at it, expect it to cost more than you want it to.

6. Don’t forget to tell people what you want them to do

It doesn’t matter whether you have created the best app for a tablet, or you are crafting a policy for BYOD, you have to let your users know what you want them to do. If it’s a policy, don’t just spell out the wrong things to do and the deadly sins; tell your users what you do want them to do. When the Coca Cola bottling company first handed out iPads, they told their employees to play Angry Birds on them. They did this so the employees would get comfortable with the devices and understand how they worked.

7. It’s the data stupid

Everybody is still convinced that a tablet or a smartphone is the same as a computer. You have to have complete control of the device. They employ the same legacy thinking they have been using for the last 15 years, lock down the device, put antivirus on it and assume that people are stupid. While people do make mistakes sometimes, their phones and tablets are usually their most precious devices. If you give them the opportunity to personalize them they take even greater care of the device. The issue is that the device doesn’t really matter. It needs to have some basic things to make sure that it can be secured, but what’s important is securing the data. You can do it through app management or if you are really progressive you can use data management. An endpoint is still an endpoint and what’s important to your company is the data and you need to protect it in transit and at rest.

In the end, you have to remember that the goal of mobilizing your enterprise is to enable your employees to be productive wherever they are in getting their job done and moving the business forward.