Budget for Managed Mobility to enable digital transformation in FY20

Enterprises planning to initiate a digital transformation project in FY20 should consider budgeting for a managed mobility service.

Mobility is foundational to digital transformation

Mobile continues to elevate customer and employee expectations. The continued growth of the digital workforce and the demand for high-quality mobile applications is pushing the pace of digital transformation.  

But, as companies rush to gain an edge over competition through digital transformation of processes, many have lost sight of the role of mobility.

While digital transformation in many cases will rely on mobile devices for delivery, many enterprises are ignoring mobility management.

There is little point in creating an outstanding app that transforms a clunky manual process, if the delivery channel for the app is a mobile device that is unmanaged and unsecured, or if the user is struggling with unreliable or slow connectivity impacting data transfer from the app.

"Mobility is the face of digital transformation"

At the 2018 Digital Transformation Online Summit, Holger Fritzinger of SAP, declared mobility as the most important attribute of the digital transformation roadmap.  He quoted the following survey findings:

• 82% of executives believe that mobile is the face of digital transformation
• 80% of executives say workers cannot do their jobs without smartphones
• 70% of access to enterprise systems will occur by mobile device by 2020
• 62% of employees delay completing tasks that require logging into multiple systems.

What will a Managed Mobility Service (MMS) deliver to digital transformation efforts?

A managed mobility service (MMS) ensures that the building blocks of connectivity and device management are in place to support the digital transformation project.

According to global research consultancy, Gartner, a Managed Mobility Service is "the IT and business process services required to plan, procure, provision, activate, manage and support mobile devices, mobile network services, related mobile management systems and mobile applications."

MMS modules managing connectivity, application management, device security, and  lifecycle operations will often be fundamental to digital project delivery and adoption. 

As business continues to seek out transformative digital strategies, they need to be focused on enterprise mobility ensuring they have visibility of device use, security, costs and ownership.

What does the budget for MMS look like?

Most MMS vendors charge a monthly fee per active mobile service. This will vary according to the number of services and the included modules. 

In most cases - if the number of mobile services is greater than 200 - the cost of the MMS service will be offset by the expense management and optimisation savings achieved. 

A reputable MMS vendor will be able to provide an ROI which guarantees cost savings through its carrier and billing optimisation module. In short, a successful MMS may well be cost neutral or cost positive.

The fee for MMS might vary from $2.50 to $7.00 per service. Adding in an optional UEM/EMM module including software licensing, will add additional costs for both licence and management, but may well be critical to the successful deployment and ongoing management of applications.

VoicePlus delivers MMS to Australian enterprises

In Australia, VoicePlus provides its Atrium Managed Mobility Service to leading enterprise clients including Coca-Cola Amatil,  CNH Industrial and Weir Minerals.

Atrium MMS has also featured in the Gartner Market Guide for Telecom Expense Management.

Atrium MMS is a self-service procurement and lifecycle management environment which operates autonomically or utilise APIs with ServiceNow and Ariba.