By Freya Purnell
While Australian IT executives see the value of mobility and plan to invest more in their area in the coming year, many organisations are struggling to see return on investment from these initiatives – and a true enterprise-wide mobility strategy may be the missing piece of the puzzle.
According to Accenture’s Mobility Insights Report 2014, a quarter of Australian organisations plan to spend considerably more on mobility in the coming year than on other digital technologies, with a quarter expecting to dedicate at least 26 per cent of their IT budget to mobility, and a further 5 per cent expecting to allocate at least half of their IT spend.
Thirty per cent of Australian organisations plan to spend at least US$30 million on mobile capabilities in the next two years – more than any other mature market except the United States.
However, only 16 per cent of Australian respondents have achieved over 100 per cent ROI for their mobility implementations in the last two years, while just under half (49 per cent) reported less than 50 per cent ROI.
“One of the biggest challenges to progress is the lack of formal, enterprise-wide mobility strategies, which in Australia is the case for 39 per cent of organisations,” said John Cassidy, Accenture Australia’s mobility lead.
“If we look to the United States, UK and China we can see a direct connection between investing in a formal mobility strategy, and achieving greater ROI. For Australian organisations to truly harness the potential of mobility, they need to make investments at a strategy, organisational and operational level.”
This type of strategy generally requires leadership from the top, but the report found that only 35 per cent of Australian CEOs were involved in developing mobile strategy. While the number of businesses developing a formal, enterprise-wide mobility strategy is decreasing – 39 per cent in 2014 compared to 65 per cent in 2013 – a greater percentage (at 47 per cent) are creating multiple strategies for different business units, which indicates that investment are being made in isolation.
The report also found that Australian organisations are struggling to develop formal metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of mobility, with only 12 per cent doing so.
“Our survey clearly shows that there is considerable opportunity for Australian organisations to get more out of their mobility initiatives,” said Cassidy.
“Organisations that are committed to building robust mobility capabilities are more likely to benefit from the promise of this increasingly important growth-generating technology, and take greater strides towards becoming a digital business.”
