Why your CTO Makes or Breaks your Enterprise Mobile Strategy
For consumers, mobile phone adoption has skyrocketed and smartphone ownership continues to climb in emerging economies. The following two mobile statistics make it abundantly clear that we’ve reached the tipping point:
- We have a lot more users globally on mobile as compared to the desktop, and
- Plus, 90% of mobile users time is spent in apps
Today mobile devices outnumber people in the world, and both entrepreneurs and enterprises should understand the increasing importance of mobile. Consumers today expect that every touchpoint you have with them is now available over mobile devices in byte-sized form.
The reality however is that many enterprises are struggling to embrace mobile as a key part of their strategy for growth. Despite having some responsive websites, or even an app or two, mobile is not yet part of the enterprise core strategy to drive growth. If this is your organization, I have a person to blame – your CTO, and below I’ll explain why.
Let’s start by looking at some critical decisions to be made at an enterprise to adopt mobile. In subsequent articles, we will discuss details of every topic below and how to practically create a mobile strategic framework that will help you make these decisions within that context.
- Native Apps vs. Responsive Web
Multiple pros and cons can be discussed for this topic and eventually the decision for every enterprise is different – it depends on the business; it depends on how much you want to differentiate your offering and more.
If you make this decision keeping your users in front and center and the value you want to provide them, you will make the right choice.
- In-house vs. Outsource Development
This decision comes down to skillset available and costs, but the trade-offs are often regarding quality of work, and how much control you will have around managing the work.
- Integration with existing Analytics & Business Intelligence Systems
As a business deploys more and more mobile services, it’s important to solve the problem of how this mobile data can be brought into existing data warehouses, business intelligence and user engagement (typically email) systems. In order to provide your users with a consistent, uniform experience across multiple devices, it becomes mandatory many times to integrate with your existing infrastructure.
- Scalability & Security
Embracing the mobile revolution means opening up your services to many more customers across locations and countries. Mobile presence makes your services readily available all the time and you have to be ready to scale. Information security, especially if you have customer data becomes critical
Even a cursory look at these decisions involved makes it clear that:
- All these decisions are technical in nature, and
- The CTO is the best single most skilled person in the enterprise to make these decisions
There are two scenarios – one where the CTO can use all of the above topics to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of the enterprise management. Even the most progressive management (CEO, CMO, CFO and CPO) will not be able to put their best step forward if the CTO is not confident of tackling these issues. Net result - you are looking at an enterprise that has not embraced mobile fully!
The second scenario is where the CTO is thinking about this issue and has a plan on how to tackle them – maybe outsource initially by the time she can build skill in-house; pick open tools and use API’s to be able to integrate with internal and 3rd party systems. Bottom line, irrespective of the plan she is exuding confidence to the rest of the management to bring it on! Even the most regressive management (CEO, CMO, CFO and CPO) in this case will not be able to resist embracing mobile.
You, the CTO are in control of your enterprise mobile strategy. It's up to you to take a stance and lead this transformation for the future.
Go and make it happen!