Stop treating mobile as a cost center

Whenever you have a conversation about mobile, you invariably end up discussing BYOD (bring your own device) and COPE (corporate-owned, personally enabled) programs. It can turn into a debate about which is better, which one is easier to support, or which one costs more. This then turns into a cost exercise. One person or another will form a team to study the costs associated with mobile and what can be done to bring them down. That’s all wrong.

The goal of any mobile program is to enable your business to meet its goals by enabling your users. You are looking to improve business processes, reinventing old ones and creating new ones that allow your business to grow through the use of mobile technology. You are trying to provide your users with the right tools, which means the right device matched with the right app, to allow them to focus on their own duties to get whatever task they need done when and where they need to do it. You spend your effort trying to make your workforce more flexible and agile while increasing its productivity and efficiency — so far, so good.

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Then what do you do? You decide it’s a cost center. You are providing mobile technology at some price, and you look for ways to lower that cost.

The problem with doing things this way is that no matter how good your intentions, you end up lowering expectations and taking shortcuts in an effort to save a few dollars. You rationalize it’s OK if your users can only use one type of device because it’s cheaper to buy from one device maker. There might be an app that does a better job and allows your employees to work a little more flexibly, but it costs twice as much — never mind whether it’s adequate. You begin to make compromises. These compromises pile up and eventually take you back to the land of legacy thinking. It’s quite simply the wrong approach.

Cost vs. value

This is not to say that cost doesn’t matter, but what if you were to look at it a little differently? When you look at your mobile program, concentrate on the value you derive by enabling your users. Figure out how much more productive they become. Calculate how much more agile you are as a company. Stop looking at mobile as a cost center and start looking at the value it provides.

The quest is for the company to meet its business goals. These can be hard numbers, like the amount of sales or repeat sales. It can be how many times you have to service a product or how easy it is to acquire new business. Whatever these goals, you have to see how mobility helps you meet them.

You may find that your service is more responsive to your customers because your service staffers have their devices on them all the time. It may be easier to check something while they are out in the field on a simple handheld device rather than going back into the office to open the manual on a computer. They may be able to respond quicker because the information arrives faster.

Then and now

Let’s take the example of an insurance adjuster. Even just a few years ago, if you had a car accident, you would call the adjuster and make an appointment for him or her to inspect the damage to your car. The adjuster would come out, take pictures, start a draft report, then head back to the office. He or she would do some research on your car — how old it was, where the damage was — then let you know what repairs you were eligible for. If you were lucky, he or she would cut you a check.

Today, the adjuster comes out with a mobile device, takes pictures, and uploads them while standing with you. In many cases, that adjuster can check out repair costs and even cut you a check in the same visit. It also takes the adjuster a quarter of the amount of time, so he or she can see more clients each day. What is the value to that insurance company of streamlining the process? A lot.

The same can happen on a manufacturing line. You may have a dozen machines stamping out pieces and putting them together. You visit the machine once an hour, and on the clipboard attached to the machine, you write down all the relevant statistics on how it’s doing. At the end of the shift, you collect the paperwork and put it into a computer. If there was a problem, you may not realize it until the end of the day when all the data gets crunched. That’s how it’s long been in factories.

Today, you can do the same thing with a tablet that you walk around with. All the relevant information is processed as you enter it. You can detect issues earlier and reduce the amount of time you spend on a task. Eventually, these machines will report themselves, and the analysis will be done automatically while you spend your time working on something else. How much is that worth to the business? Again, a lot.

We need to stop looking at everything as a cost center that we have to cut to bare bones and instead look at the value we derive from enabling our users and our business. It may not be a simple ROI equation, but it needs to stop being just a line in the budget. Learn to change your thinking from cost to value; in the long run, your business will be much happier and more successful.

This article, “Stop treating mobile as a cost center,” originally appeared at A Screw’s Loose and is republished at InfoWorld.com with permission (© Brian Katz). Read more of Brian Katz’s The Squeaky Wheel blog at InfoWorld.com or at A Screw’s Loose. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.