A benchmarking report released by SAP reveals that companies with mature mobile best practices double their operating margins and experience three times higher revenue growth compared to those with average mobile practices. The global study is comprised of more than 300 SAP customers of all sizes and across all industries such as banking, consumer products, high tech, professional services, public sector, telecommunications and utilities.
The study evaluated customers in four areas for competitive advantage, including mobile strategy, creation of mobile apps, control of mobile devices and consumption of mobile apps. For each of the four categories, participating companies were evaluated on the maturity of their best practices and greatest business impact and then divided into five levels of maturity.
The most mature companies displayed a clear set of common characteristics that include: a mobile strategy in place for all departments and relevant processes; input obtained from all external and internal stakeholders; established operating system standards and a reliable platform deployed; all security and scalability issues addressed; a strong, well-documented security policy, centralized device monitoring and an excellent device authentication mechanism in place; and end-user involvement early in the development cycle and feedback phase; training on new applications and all wireless issues; mobile access to all enterprise applications.
The leading companies from the study reported that 37.5 percent of users with mobile access to cross-functional applications experience more than 43 percent higher productivity compared to companies in the bottom tier. On average, survey participants were most mature when managing and controlling mobile applications but least mature when developing a mobile strategy.
"While mobile is now the primary way people communicate, connect and transact, our latest benchmarking report supports the fact that mobile adoption in the workplace is still in the early stages," says Nick Brown, senior vice president, Mobile Strategy and Market Development, SAP. "The benefits of mobile are well documented and understood by most organizations, but a successful implementation requires a clear strategy and comprehensive platform. SAP mobile platform is the only unified mobile solution capable of meeting all mobile app needs, and we expect to reach millions of developers that will create thousands of applications for more than 1 billion people by 2015."
More information about SAP is available at www.sap.com.