Last year, nearly all CIO’s and global enterprises I’ve met with expressed a desire to be able to better manage their mobile fleet globally in some capacity. Although Mobility Managed Services (MMS) meant something slightly different to each CIO, they all made it a point to mention their organization was global and they would eventually need a global provider/solution. Mobility Management to some meant solely focusing on core expense management functions like invoice processing and procurement services while others were more interested in reverse logistics, help desk services, securing data and having us manage their applications and policies for them. Most, if not all, mentioned “better visibility” as a necessity. Regardless of which area of MMS these CIO’s were focused on, most CIO’s last year were looking at implementing a Mobility Management solution globally, but more as a “Phase II” approach. Shortly after speaking about their locations around the world, the very next statement made was usually something similar to “…but right now let’s focus on implementing in N. America first and then we can discuss implementing globally down the road”. In fact, only about one quarter of my global customers last year started their implementation plan on a complete global schedule. However, those CIO’s and organizations who decided to start with a global roll-out schedule upfront are now well ahead of the curve and are realizing far more savings and visibility across their entire organization.
Like most global implementations, it will take many months to roll-out services globally as you are dealing with numerous countries, languages, carriers, data privacy laws and regulations. Those organizations who decided to start globally from the beginning either have most of their regions up and running as of today with only a few countries remaining or they are fully implemented and running full speed ahead. Either way they are all realizing better mobile management, visibility, security and savings across more of their organization. On the other hand, those organizations who came onboard around the same time, but decided to start implementing in one country first before phasing out globally are just now starting to roll-out to their second country or region and that is a best case scenario. Being able to maintain focus on the overall global picture is why there is such a gap between the two sides. Granted not every organization is prepared to implement globally at once, but those CIO’s who were able to and who had the strategy to implement globally from the start were forced to stay focused globally and keep other regions and local fleet managers involved throughout. Without a global strategy upfront, there is a tendency to get tied up with other projects or implementation tasks. In many cases, global conversations usually have to start all over again in order to reignite the spark to continue implementing with other regions.
The difference one year makes. In 2014 there’s been a noticeable difference when speaking with CIOs about their global strategy. Many more CIOs and global organizations are discussing plans to implement globally right away and are asking many more global questions earlier on in discussions compared to last year. Although I’m finding that MMS priorities are still different from company to company, this year the majority of CIO’s seem to be showing more of a desire to start implementing with a full global roll-out plan in place in order to maximize savings and overall mobility management benefits. Another great advantage about this global approach is that it will quickly help CIO’s eliminate vendors who claim to be global, but really only have 50-100 employees to support MMS. This now allows CIO’s, IT leaders and companies to focus on evaluating truly global vendors who provide a complete global MMS solution.
For more information on MMS or if you’re interested in having Paul Salamanca speak about MMS please contact him via Linkedin
