Mobile Investment Rests On Collaboration Between IT Decision Makers And Operations Technology
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
The next phase of enterprise mobile investment hinges on better collaboration between IT and execs.
VDC research finds the next phase of enterprise mobile investment is dependent upon greater collaboration between executive management, operations technology, and IT decision makers. Driven by operational objectives, mobile investments often are held in check by IT requirements, thus creating barriers for investment and success.
According to Enterprise Mobile Buyer Behavior Dataset – IT & Operational Perspectives, an examination of end-user buying behavior has revealed the emergence of operations technology has complicated the role of the IT department. The report states, “While the objectives of the IT department remain the same, the manner in which they complete these objectives and the forces with which they must now contend have changed.”
As mobile technology evolves and becomes more central to facilitating business processes, it has led to changes in the acquisition process for that technology. Accordingly, “The adoption of a cross-functional approach to technology investment decisions and development of mobile centers of excellence all point to the necessary maturation in how leading organizations tackle these challenges. What market leaders are realizing are the benefits of tighter collaboration between IT and OT decision-makers yield much greater solution ROI.”
While both entities have the company’s best interests at heart, they often take different approaches to how technology fits into the overall corporate strategy. Generally, the Operations side views mobility as a tool to achieve business goals and achieve efficiency, while IT focuses on the threats that mobility poses and the challenge of threat mitigation. Their focus, therefore, is on security, governance, and integration of mobility. But the lines between OT and IT are blurring, given the emergence of new comprehensive mobility strategies and the rise of IoT initiatives and other developments. That means that greater collaboration between these entities needs to be developed in order to further enterprise mobile technology investments and successes.
Ultimately, successful selection and deployment of enterprise mobility and IoT solutions is dependent upon greater collaboration between the IT and OT sides of the business, in which they try to understand and adopt some of the other side’s viewpoints.
As Matt Hopkins, an Enterprise Mobility and Connected Devices Research Associate at VDC Research said, “Those companies that have invested in mobile solutions have generally met the objectives that drove their investments in the first place. This speaks to the efficacy of mobile solutions in meeting operational objectives, but technical obstacles such as security and integration continue to plague organizations. In this way, communication between the operations and technical side of the house is crucial if a company’s mobile investments are to provide a meaningful return and not jeopardize the interests of the company from a security perspective.”