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As the CIOs debated, one thing that came out loud and clear was: with enterprise mobility assuming bigger dimensions, graduating from talks in the air to the on-ground implementations phase, CIOs are looking for answers to questions around RoI and productivity benefits.

With CIOs coming under increasing pressure to justify investments and maximize RoI, the Dataquest CIO Summit on Measuring Productivity in the Mobile Environment decided to address some of these challenges and strived to measure whether the investment on mobility is worth the productivity gains.

The keynote addresses, delivered by Vijay Shukla, co-founder and country head, India, ValueFirst and Ravi Subramanyam, country head, MobileOne, aptly captured the flavor of the day, ie, the RoI and productivity aspects of enterprise mobility. Hot mobility applications and accrued productivity, securing the mobile environment, and technologies for enterprise mobility were among the various issues raised, debated, and discussed during the summit organized across three citiesMumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi.

The panelist mix in all the three cities was adequately represented by a vast range of verticals, bringing forth an insight into the varied issues and challenges in the context of their respective environments. The summit attracted speakers from diverse verticals like auto, healthcare, petroleum and energy, IT/ITeS, telecom, media and entertainment, BFSI, logistics, and core infrastructure, etc.

Supplementing the views coming from the CIO mix were industry experts from KPMG and vendors, service providers and SIs including representatives from Alcatel Lucent, HP, Reliance Communications, Team Computers, and Check Point. The panelists discussed the challenges and strategies for deriving productivity benefits from various mobility applications like push email, sales force automation, remote data capture, and vehicle tracking system. The group also debated on the different mobility technology options focusing on technology issues, productivity, returns, and applications that can be built on GPRS/EDGE, CDMA, SMS, Wi-Fi, and WiMax.

Panel at Bangalore (l to r): Mohit Jain of 24/7 Customer, a Vijayarajan of Manipal Hospitals, Ponnanna Uthappa of team Computers, Vijay Subramaniam of KPMg, Vijay Shukla of ValueFirst, and Chandra Vikash of ten Systems

Mobility has its inevitable security issuesfrom access and intrusion to the theft or loss of mobile devices like laptops, phones, etc. KPMG representatives drew an insight on how enterprises can tackle system-wide security and access control in a mobile environment.

Gains or Pains?
Enterprise mobility solutions have started the transition from over hype and failed pilots. The realization that is dawning is that any organization that has its human resources traveling constantly needs to adopt mobility. Moving into the league of mainstream technology, guaranteeing the success of corporate mobility initiatives has become imperative for CIOs, thereby putting a lot more onus on them as opposed to about 2-3 years ago, when they were still experimenting and dabbling with mobility for their enterprise.

Rajneesh De of Dataquest introduces the experts in the second session at Bangalore, with him are Sethuraman of alcatel lucent, Paramjit Puri of Cisco, rahul Biswari of HP, Vijay Subramaniam of KPMg, and Chandra Vikash of ten Systems

The panelists were of the view that while measuring productivity is critical to determining the success of mobility projects, it may not always be possible to justify mobility investments with an RoI figure. Nevertheless, there was also agreement on the fact that investment in mobile enterprise solutions requires a careful consideration of the business value versus cost issue.

With IT budgets shrinking, an understanding of what enterprise mobility applications can realistically deliver on ground has become very critical. So, it is important to understand where it can improve, optimize and transfer the bottomline. With this in mind, CIOs need to set their expectations of the challenges that they are trying to overcome and the business benefits they are trying to achieve. This, in effect, becomes the measure for RoI and productivity in the future.

An attentive audience at Bangalore

So, what is value? What is RoI? As Subramanyam pointed out, it has to be really seen in the light of the total enterprise context and the entire process, and not just in relation to the person who is carrying the gadget.

Enterprises have almost spent a decade in IT automation processes. They have started integrating materials management with production, integrating sales with distribution, integrating financial with sales and have done a lot of optimization. They have invested a lot of money in ERP, CRM, SCM, SRM, BLM, and BI. Mobility is needed so that these investments can be extended to people who really need it, and many of these people today are on the move.

Panel at DelHI (l to r): ashok Wahi of omnia BPo, Sudhanshu Fadnis of KPMg, and rajesh Uppal and ravi Subramanyam of Mobileone

Utilizing the existing investments more effectively and efficiently through mobility is one way of measuring productivity. What is the value for an enterprise for cutting down on the processing cycle and saving on time through the use of mobility applications? That value is the RoI and the productivity benefits from mobility for the enterprise.

Prasanto K roy of CyberMedia at Delhi	SPeaKerS: ravi Subramanyam (left) of Mobileone and Vijay Shukla (right) of ValueFirst

All ears at Delhi

Participants at Delhi

Sudhanshu Fadnis of KPMg, Delhi

	An interactive session

XPert SeSSIon (l-r): Paramjit Puri of Cisco, Sameer Sandhir of alcatel lucent, Kunal Pande of KPMg, ritu Madbhavi of FCB Ulka, and Suresh Shanmugham of Mahindra&Mahindra Finance

Shukla provided yet another perspective as he pointed out that for measuring RoI, one needs to have a business case for any mobility initiative and the mobility has to be a part of the overall ICT strategy. He pointed out that business users are getting more and more demanding. They come back to IT with the following questions: Can I get closer to customers using mobility? Can I reduce my cost using mobility? Can I have better turnaround time? Can I use mobility as a competitive differentiator in the business? Can I have the ability to react more quickly and with increased accuracy? These questions are the measure for RoI and the answers to these questions will help in measuring and determining the return on mobility investments and productivity gains. He pointed out to some of the generic productivity gains and business imperatives linked with mobility implementationsbetter collaboration, enhanced customer value, operation efficiency, faster decision making, and ability to move quicker.

XPert SeSSIon (l-r): Paramjit Puri of Cisco, Sameer Sandhir of alcatel lucent, Kunal Pande of KPMg, ritu Madbhavi of FCB Ulka, and Suresh Shanmugham of Mahindra&Mahindra Finance

At MUMBaI: aditya Menon of obopay, Vijay Shukla of Value First, alok Kumar of reliance Industries, ravi Subramanyam of Mobileone, Shirish gariba of elbee, anwer Baghdadi of CFC, Kunal Pande of KPMg, and ananth Sayana of l&t

Rajesh Uppal of Maruti Udyog	Taking noteS: Delegates at Mumbai

A common thread of discussion among the panelists in the three cities was the emphasis on making RoI quantifiable as far as possible by choosing mobility projects based on their ability to generate targeted and measurable business benefits productivity gains like increased customer service and satisfaction or reduced costs and increased revenue.

CIo a Vijayarajan (left) of Manipal Hospitals at the Bangalore Summit and CIo anantha Sayana of l&t at the Mumbai Summit

Maximizing RoI
As the discussion moved in the direction of how to ensure success of the mobility initiatives and maximize RoI, the onus came on designing an appropriate mobility strategy. Providing a stable connection regardless of location and enabling users to access their information while on the go should be a well thought out and planned exercise. Enterprises should have a common vision, leadership support, and a strategic path to implement enterprise mobility solutions, in order to avoid a fragmented approach to the mobility initiatives, the panelists agreed.

On a break

Subramanyam pointed out that there are too many components involveda mobile device, a data network, a mobile application, a backing system sitting somewhere, integration to this backend system, and the managed service system to make the entire thing work. There are a number of things which are required to make an enterprise mobile solution up and running because once you get the system in place, you cannot afford downtime of these kinds of systems at all.

Shipra Malhotra
shipram@cybermedia.co.in

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