TOWARDS TOTAL ENTERPRISE MOBILITY NEXT-GENERATION …€¦ · embed mobile-enabled processes and practices into the fabric of their organisations. Worryingly, this is just the tip

1 Towards Total Enterprise Mobility – next-generation business

TOWARDS TOTAL ENTERPRISE MOBILITY

NEXT-GENERATIONBUSINESS

2 Towards Total Enterprise Mobility – next-generation business

Consumers are driving an unstoppable mobile revolution that is transforming the way we live, work and play, but British businesses are lagging dangerously behind the curve. This revolution is disrupting markets and creating a step-change opportunity for the next generation of businesses both in terms of their employees and – in a crucial difference to the past – how they can best serve their customers.

In this white paper, we will discuss factors that are changing the world – from the ways we access the internet to the expectations of our employees and customers, and the opportunity UK businesses have to compete with the best in the world on this new battleground. We also present Total Enterprise Mobility, a new approach to enterprise mobility designed specifically to help next-generation businesses harness this opportunity.

Over half (51 per cent) of adults in the UK now claim to own a smartphone1 and they demand the same fast, seamless experience they get from their personal devices and superfast connectivity as both employees and consumers.

Yet only 21 per cent of employees in British businesses are equipped to work away from their desks and 41 per cent said the mobile devices they use for work are old and not fast enough. Businesses in many vertical sectors, such as retail, are struggling to deal with the new mobile-first customer mindset.2

It has been a lost decade for British businesses since the launch of third-generation mobile services (3G). Citing barriers such as security risks or the cost of the technology, businesses have simply been far too slow to embed mobile-enabled processes and practices into the fabric of their organisations.

Worryingly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when we look at the change and disruption still to come and the pace at which it is happening. For example, it took the mobile phone less than five years to reach the same level of penetration – half of households – that took the humble landline almost a century. Today, smartphones have already accomplished a 40 per cent household-penetration rate, with tablet adoption also rising fast.3

If we look beyond these shores, to countries where superfast fourth-generation (4G) adoption is more advanced, the argument for upgrading is compelling. In the US, where 4G services were launched in 2010, two-thirds of companies using 4G said they have increased productivity and almost half (47 per cent) said they have cut costs, with another 39 per cent saying it has helped them win new business.4

Next-generation business simply cannot afford to ignore this mobile tipping point.

“BUSINESSES HAVE BEEN FAR TOO SLOW TO EMBED MOBILE-ENABLED PROCESSES AND PRACTICES INTO THE FABRIC OF THEIR BUSINESS.”

“NEXT-GENERATION BUSINESS SIMPLY CANNOT AFFORD TO IGNORE THIS MOBILE TIPPING POINT.”

1Ofcom Communications Market Report 2013 http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/cmr13/2013_UK_CMR.pdf . Other research puts the number higher - close to two-thirds (61 per cent) according to Deloitte, Mobile Consumer Survey 20132https://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedKingdom/Local%20Assets/Documents/Industries/TMT/uk-tmt-upwardly-mobile-v.pdf3http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-speeding-up/4http://business.ee.co.uk/ad-little

1. INTRODUCTION

3 Towards Total Enterprise Mobility – next-generation business

At EE, we provide mobile services to 27 million people in the UK and we see first-hand how the innovation cycle in mobile is driven by consumers. Many experience superfast speeds over their handsets that are faster than traditional wired broadband connections. To drive next-generation business, the UK needs to embrace this consumer-led revolution and an innovation cycle that is faster than previous technology shifts.

This mobility watershed is also much more than just equipping a workforce with email and internet access on the go. The computing power of today’s smartphones and tablets, coupled with superfast 4G connectivity, is transforming how business is done – whether that be mobile ticketing, advertising, e-wallets, mobile data insights, branded affinity WiFi services, enterprise app stores or the countless bespoke business processes and workflows that are starting to be mobilised across the country.

4G already covers over 70 per cent of the UK population5, WiFi is common in both homes and public venues and connectivity increasingly isn’t initiated by people – the so-called Internet of Things is already transforming logistics, supply chains, manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, utilities and more.

The foundation of infrastructure has been laid. Consumers, most notably twentysomething members of Generation Y who are moving up the ranks in companies, are only too happy to live a mobile-first life, expecting to use their own personal devices in the workplace, as seen with the bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon. What does that mean for the future?

We like to break down future opportunities into three key areas:

• A genuinely mobile workforce. More of your workforce able to work wherever they want as effectively as if they were in the office – if not more so. Mobility makes your business more productive, more agile and able to respond to customers faster, and your employees more engaged, with a better work-life balance.

• Engaging with your customers through their

mobile devices. This is no longer one-way traffic through emails or texts, or relying on the phone. Two-way conversations through apps and shared systems make mobile a key customer service, fulfilment and marketing channel.

• Connected machines mean the future isn’t only about people communicating with each other or an online service, it’s built on the widely heralded Internet of Things, where information can move freely between machines, and from machines to your people, who need it in real time.

Together, we call this approach Total Enterprise Mobility. But it isn’t about us. It’s about the future opportunities our customers will have. It is about next-generation business.

“TWO-THIRDS OF US COMPANIES USING 4G SAID THEY HAVE INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY “

5Coverage for EE alone.

4 Towards Total Enterprise Mobility – next-generation business

Mobile-first – the new mantra of the internet

We just saw a tipping point. In her last annual projection of all things mobile and internet, KPCB analyst Mary Meeker estimated that the installed base of smartphones and tablets overtook desktop and laptop personal computers in 2013.6

PC sales suffered their worst decline in history in 2013 and in this post-PC era, as mobile devices account for more of our screen time, IDC predicts tablets outstripping both laptop and PC sales by 2015.7

Closely following the installed base numbers, by mid-2014 the number of people accessing the internet over mobile devices will overtake those using fixed-line connections, according to IDATE. This is important because mobile interaction with the internet is different to traditional PC browsing.

Tablets in particular, whether away from a home or office or in those environments, lend themselves to rapid consumption of content. Meanwhile, smartphone use takes place in bite-size chunks, in different locations, using various networks and for tasks that aren’t always appropriate on a PC.

As a result, every type of company is adjusting its behaviour and thinking in terms of mobile-first.

Take the retail sector, for example. According to Verdict Research, online spend in the UK via mobile devices will rocket over the next five years, rising from £7.9bn this year to £23.1bn in 2018. UK retailer John Lewis saw traffic from

mobile devices to its website on Christmas Day 2013 overtake visits from PCs for the first time.8

For physical shops, mobile is both threat and opportunity. The trend of showrooming – whereby shoppers use their smartphone to compare prices and reviews for a product that is in front of them, sometimes then ordering from elsewhere over the web – must either be counteracted or exploited.

In the publishing world, even decades-old stalwarts such as The Atlantic go mobile-first

when it comes to new launches (the successful qz.com), while short-format video platform Vine was initially launched by Twitter only as an iOS app, attracting tens of millions of registered users in just a few months and becoming the most downloaded free app in the iOS App Store.

This is about much more than new ways of working. Combining superfast connectivity with the cloud, insights from Big Data and connected machines means a leap forward in the products and services companies can provide.

Whole industries are changing. Hailing a cab has moved from the wave of a hand to a phone call, to two taps on an app from Hailo or Uber. Such services use GPS and network location-based services as well as Big Data to work out which driver should pick up which fare. It’s a success for passengers, drivers and the service providers themselves – but an uncomfortable ride for established players they’re overtaking.

“BY MID-2014 THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ACCESSING THE INTERNET OVER MOBILE DEVICES WILL OVERTAKE THOSE USING FIXED-LINE CONNECTIONS“

6http://futurethinking.ee.co.uk/byod-and-the-post-pc-mobile-device-tipping-point-for-the-workplace/7http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS241299138http://www.verdictretail.com/shopping-on-the-go-mobile-and-tablet-spending-set-to-soar/

2. THE UK BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT IS CHANGING FOREVER

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Such scenarios are being played out across industries, while machine-to-machine (M2M) communications are already delivering value for organisations today – from remote healthcare applications to smart meters and vehicle tracking and management. All of which are the forerunners of the much bigger prize of the smart, connected world of the Internet of Things.

Great expectations – employees and consumers in the driving seat

The technology in the workplace used to be far superior to what most people had at home. In the space of 20 years, driven by Moore’s Law and consumerisation, that picture has been totally reversed and employees now demand more choice at work.

There is still a big gap between expectation and experience though. According to Deloitte, 97 per cent of employees with smartphones use apps today, yet only 16 per cent of those use apps for business.

In the case of tablets there is a difference between the employer and employee view of the device’s usefulness for work. Analyst Ovum has found 17.6 per cent of employees get a tablet from their employer yet almost 70 per cent report using their own personal tablet for work.

These employee and consumer expectations offer great opportunities for next-generation business.

Offering employees more choice and flexibility over the technology they use, whether through a basic bring your own device (BYOD) policy - but beware the hidden costs - or a more sophisticated choose your own device or corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE) programme can improve engagement and productivity.

Embracing a mobile-first mindset and the expectations of tech-savvy employees and customers offers businesses opportunities to drive productivity, innovation, and collaboration, and improve customer engagement and responsiveness.

Employee and customer expectations for mobility will only continue to grow as consumers become more and more sophisticated users, as mobile device penetration increases and connectivity becomes faster.

Mind the mobile gap

But not all is well. Just a fifth of workers in the UK consider themselves mobile and 68 per cent note a difference between their mobile experience at work and at home – for example using older, slower devices.9

It is a worrying situation, which may leave the UK up to 10 years behind some countries in Europe.

This also becomes increasingly untenable in the war for talent, accentuated by the increasing role Generation Y plays. These employees look for flexibility when looking for jobs and 61 per cent say they favour roles where they can use the latest technology10. As Jack Welch, one of the most respected business leaders of the 20th century, puts it: “Generation Y is the most exciting group in the world. They want to do their own thing; they want to change the world.”

But the UK is no mobile technology backwater. With all the building blocks in place, another way to look at this is that there is plenty of room for improvement. Those organisations that know how to embrace Total Enterprise Mobility stand the best chance of satisfying the needs of their workers and customers – and succeeding in business.

“THIS IS ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN NEW WAYS OF WORKING “

9Deloitte, Opinion Matters Upwardly Mobile Survey, May 2013 – 21 per cent of British employees are equipped to work away from their desks.10Deloitte, Opinion Matters Upwardly Mobile Survey, May 2013

6 Towards Total Enterprise Mobility – next-generation business

Who will the winners be in this superfast mobile era? Enterprise mobility is far more than mobilising the workforce in search of productivity benefits. EE’s vision is to support a changing mindset in the UK, one where mobile becomes a critical strategy for competing in an increasingly digital business environment.

This is a strategy that includes the three pillars of opportunity for mobility: the workforce, customer engagement and machine connectivity. Why? For one thing your customers and your employees are increasingly demanding it. For another, it will drive your business growth.

This means the right superfast network, with the scale and capacity to meet your future needs, and the right devices, supported by enabling technology that makes your critical business content and applications available securely.

Most significantly – and this is the revolution – this equation is about engaging with your customers through their mobile devices. This can mean m-payments such as prepaid credit cards, contactless ticketing or your own-brand public WiFi solutions that allow you to connect and build affinity with your customers when on your premises. Or it can mean your own-brand mobile apps that allow you to offer product information and self-serve options, including product ordering.

And finally let’s not forget about the Internet of Things and the opportunity to connect machines. That can mean providing in-vehicle WiFi as a competitive feature for taxi and hire car firms or the ability to track and monitor important assets through logistics and supply systems. Or how about the introduction of remote monitoring capabilities such as healthcare applications that reduce expensive hospital readmissions?

The ability to track and schedule your maintenance fleet remotely so the nearest available agent is automatically actioned can significantly increase customer satisfaction

and the number of jobs your current workforce undertakes.

In all these areas and more, there is now an urgency to act, to make the most of technology which consumers are already embracing. We believe that urgency is satisfied only with a laser focus on mobility and the heaviest investment in the infrastructure required.

The mobility technology landscape is changing at a rapid pace, driven by a phenomenal consumer appetite for device and app innovation. This on-going change in the consumer mobile experience is changing consumer behaviour, radically disrupting and challenging traditional business models, creating an urgency for businesses to act on all three areas of mobility opportunity.

Being successful in this new world is about freeing up information and enabling it to flow freely between the employees, customers and machines that need it, regardless of where they are.

Mobile is the next-generation business channel of choice and this requires organisations to adopt an integrated strategy that joins up the pillars of workforce, customers and connected machines.

We call this approach Total Enterprise Mobility, our vision for competing and succeeding in the fast-changing digital business environment in the UK.

“THE THREE PILLARS OF OPPORTUNITY FOR MOBILITY: THE WORKFORCE, CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AND MACHINE CONNECTIVITY.“

3. TOTAL ENTERPRISE MOBILITY AND NEXT STEPS

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What comes next?

Total enterprise mobility creates opportunities for all parts of your organisation. Business leaders in HR must understand the best ways for their people to work and how more flexible working and device choice can improve engagement. Those running sales and marketing increasingly see a world where customers must have a mobile channel option – or lose out to competitors that do. Operations leaders need to assess how mobility can reduce costs through streamlining workflows and processes. Product and service leaders should look at whether mobility offers new feature and customer journey enhancements.

Enterprise mobility must shift from being seen as a cost commodity viewpoint to a critical strategic enabler for the business. Our aim at EE is to help those with these responsibilities use the Total Enterprise Mobility concept to build a complete, holistic mobility vision for their own organisations. This is a total vision aligned to their own organisational goals, embracing the fullest mobility opportunity, from mobilising the workforce to engaging with customers and connecting machines.

This all starts with the mobile network and that’s why, here at EE, we have built the biggest and fastest network in the UK with the scale to meet future data growth. Our vision is to build and deliver the total mobility solutions that are right for your business with the insight and benefits that only come from partnering with the company that provides mobility to more customers than anyone else.

“MOBILE IS THE NEXT-GENERATION BUSINESS CHANNEL OF CHOICE“

We look forward to your feedback on Total Enterprise Mobility and to entering into a discussion with you about the best way forward – the best way to next-generation business.

How ready are you for next-generation business? Take our Total Enterprise Mobility survey and benchmark your business.

Visit www.ee.co.uk/total-mobility-tool or call us on 0800 0790877