Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column where C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry share unique insights and experiences.
There is no doubt that mobility can be a powerful tool to increase the productivity and flexibility of individual employees. But it can also mean that enterprises are under greater pressure to provide new IT services within budget and amid increasingly fragmented software and hardware environments. Understanding exactly where your communications assets are, who is using them, and how, is crucial if you are to ensure cost-effective and secure access to services.
Existing telecom expense management software already helps enterprises to track and measure assets and communications spend. But because CIOs face an unprecedented rise in mobile usage, much of it initiated by employees, they can struggle to build a coherent, centralized picture of an enterprise’s evolving telecom usage and spend.
Trends such as bring-your-own-device, which can help to bring down the cost of procuring assets, also make data usage harder to track and secure. As a result, enterprises face the prospect of having to increase their spend on security and data management. In addition, BYOD can lead to employees’ mobile expenditure being reported as a general business expense and paid for by a business unit, thereby reducing the transparency of mobility costs.
The speed at which mobility is altering enterprise IT usage and purchasing patterns means that efforts to manage telecoms expenditure need to go far beyond tracking the cost of fixed and mobile contracts with operators and resellers, important though this is. In order to obtain an end-to-end view of the cost of mobility, and oversee a cost-effective service evolution that provides a measurable return on investment, CIOs need to take a centralized approach to telecom expense management that engages all business units and interlinks with other mobile management initiatives. Effective management of telecoms expenditure requires standard work practices that eliminate fragmented approaches to security policies, mobility planning, sourcing, application design, support and cost management.
CIOs also need to work directly with business units to ensure that their mobile strategy meets each division’s business objectives. Yet of 2,053 CIOs surveyed worldwide by Gartner, 65% reported that the main barrier to achieving continuous optimization of IT costs was the inability of the entire organization to work together towards the same goal.
Rising mobile usage is set to keep telecom expense management at the heart of enterprise IT strategies. But it can only be effective as part of a wider mobile management strategy that is simple, flexible and built around business objectives.
Fernando Alvarez is VP and leader of Capgemini’s Mobile Solutions practice. A thought leader and mobile solutions/technology subject matter expert, Alvarez has worked closely with multiple multinational corporations as well as global independent software vendors with regard to their enterprise mobile needs and strategies. Prior to joining Capgemini, Alvarez was president, CEO and chairman of Abaco Mobile, an Atlanta-based software company that provided enterprise mobile software solutions for more than 21 years. In 2000, Alvarez was honored as one of the 100 most influential U.S. Hispanic business leaders by Hispanic Business magazine. He is also a past recipient of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Alvarez has a background in business, economics, and law, and is a frequent guest lecturer at industry events around the world.
