A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By AT&T Mobile Enters A Second, More Complex, Deployment And Implementation Phase November 2013
Table Of Contents Executive Summary: The Age Of Cheap And Easy Mobile Is Over!... 1 Complexity No. 1: Meeting Increased Customer Expectations And Scale Of Implementations/Change... 2 Complexity No. 2: Creating A Common Strategy And Coordinated Approach... 3 Complexity No. 3: Developing A New Mix Of Skills And A Network Of External Partners... 5 Complexity No. 4: Implementing The Back-End And External Integration To Deliver Full Value... 6 Key Recommendations... 8 Appendix A: Methodology... 9 Appendix B: Endnotes... 9 ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING Forrester Consulting provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders succeed in their organizations. Ranging in scope from a short strategy session to custom projects, Forrester s Consulting services connect you directly with research analysts who apply expert insight to your specific business challenges. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting. 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com. [1-MFT1RT]
1 Executive Summary: The Age Of Cheap And Easy Mobile Is Over! Mobile is entering a second, more far-reaching and complex stage of deployment and use; the option of doing mobile on the cheap and easy is over for most organizations. Driven by accelerating customer expectations around convenience, ease-of-use, and real-time access to information and transactions, mobile has an expanding set of implications and unintended consequences for enterprises. Mobile initiatives are no longer simple standalone efforts led by the business unit or IT. The scale of organizational transformation, the re-engineering of business processes, the refactoring of traditional business systems and the skills required to manage large-scale deployments and build compelling user experiences require a level of spending and organizational coordination traditionally associated with large-scale business systems like ERP. In August 2013, on behalf of AT&T, Forrester did an online survey of 165 North American and European business and IT executives responsible for mobile strategy within their organization. KEY FINDINGS The study s key findings yielded four complexities associated with firms growing mobile efforts: Meeting increased customer expectations and scale of implementations/change. Client demands are outstripping a company s ability to react. Firms are adding more apps to meet those demands, and the apps need to be maintained every day. Creating a common strategy and coordinated approach. As mobile touches more and more aspects of a firm s organization and business processes, more and more business and IT leaders need to be involved in defining a strategy, the technology requirements, and use cases. Developing a new mix of skills and network of external partners. Mobile requires that firms create a hybrid set of user experience, development, and legacy integration skills to support the aggressive app agenda. Implementing the back end and external integration to deliver full value. As respondents aim to combine the physical context insights from the sensors on the mobile devices with the virtual intelligence in traditional systems to provide more valuable apps that proactively serve customers, the integration complexity goes up geometrically.
2 Complexity No. 1: Meeting Increased Customer Expectations And Scale Of Implementations/Change FIGURE 1 Customer Expectations Outstrip Companies Ability To Innovate Mobile is part of a perfect technology storm, along with social, cloud, analytics, and smart products, that is 1 fundamentally changing customer behavior. This presents the biggest complexity challenge for organizations. Client demands for pricing, service, and information via mobile apps were outstripping firms ability to innovate and deliver (see Figure 1). Firms inability to change their business processes and refresh their legacy systems holds their mobile strategy hostage. This was especially a challenge for European respondents. In addition to the challenge of adapting their business, companies face multiple challenges in scaling up their mobile efforts to meet client demand: The number of apps grows for all the different audiences. Respondents plan to increase the size of their application portfolio by 17% to 45%, depending on the constituency (see Figure 2). North American companies have the largest percentage of 26+ solutions, while European firms lead in the 16-25 app range. Larger sized firms lead 26+ apps, reflecting diversity and scale of their business. Organizations that have implemented strategy have larger consumer app portfolios, reflecting business head involvement and external customer pressure. Firms just getting started with a mobile strategy are more focused on building apps for business partners. The accelerating rate of releases required to support mobile innovation stresses organizations. The move from three releases a decade in the PC world to five-to-10 releases a year in the mobile world challenges companies because they can t change their back end quickly enough and because they re resource-constrained. Forty-six percent of the respondents said they could not upgrade their back-end systems quickly enough to keep up with changes in the front-end mobile apps. Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013 The age of cheap mobile projects is over. As the scale and technical complexity of the mobile effort increases, firms struggle to find the funds required to make the business and technology changes.
3 FIGURE 2 Number Of Apps Deployed Is Growing For Every AudienceFIGURE 4 A Range Of Business And IT Leaders Are Involved In Mobile Strategy Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013 development and deployment Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013 Complexity No. 2: Creating A Common Strategy And Coordinated Approach As firms mobile efforts become more intricate, firms have the added challenge of coordinating their efforts companywide. As a first step to addressing the increasing scale of mobile, respondents are putting in place companywide strategies to better coordinate and fund their efforts. Twenty-seven percent already have one in place, and another 42% are rolling out their road map. Respondents in the US are more likely to have the strategy in place, while European firms remain in implementation mode. A higher percentage of larger firms (20,000+ employees) have implemented a strategy, as have companies in the financial services and manufacturing sectors: Companies create cross-function teams to support the mobile plan of attack. Reflecting mobile s application and benefit across the enterprise from sales, field service, distribution, business partner relations, and executive reporting dashboards, respondents report having created multidiscipline teams to plan their strategy (see Figure 3). A broad range of business and IT are involved in mobile. As mobile changes their business, more executives outside of IT are playing a role in its adoption (see Figure 4). This is especially true in North America, and respondents that have already adopted a strategy see a higher degree of sales and marketing, product development, ecommerce, and CFO involvement. Companies with a mobile plan on the books have a higher level of business involvement. Those still rolling out their mobile strategy are more likely to have IT taking the lead. Business plays an increasing role in mobile strategy and funding. Not only is the business funding the development of apps, in some cases, it is even involved in funding middleware investments on the back end (see
4 Figure 5). Firms that have implemented a mobile plan of attack say the non-it leaders are more involved in every area but security (this is a contrast to firms that are not as far along in their mobile rollout). This reflects their higher level of interest and the fact that mobile is part of the business taking a greater role in technology. FIGURE 4 A Range Of Business And IT Leaders Are Involved In Mobile Strategy FIGURE 3 Firms Are Taking A More Coordinated Approach To Mobile Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013 FIGURE 5 Business Is Taking An Active Role In Funding And Setting Mobile Strategy Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013 Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013
5 Complexity No. 3: Developing A New Mix Of Skills And A Network Of External Partners FIGURE 6 Security, Integration, And Lack Of Skills Top Technology Hindrances The growing scale of mobile implementations and rising customer expectations leave firms scrambling to create the right mix of development, user experience, and legacy integration skills to develop the next generation of mobile applications beyond screen-scraping the website. In parallel, companies are turning to third parties to bridge the skills gap and scale up their efforts: Finding the right mix of technical and user experience expertise hinders mobile efforts. While security remains the top technical challenge for respondents, over a third of them do not have the right developer skill sets (see Figure 6). And for firms with more apps that need to scale up development efforts, this is an even higher rated challenge. The growing integration requirement poses its own skills challenge. While the mixing of UXP and development skills has been a previously acknowledged challenge, 34% of the respondents face an additional expertise hurdle developers that also understand how to integrate mobile apps with a complex hodgepodge of legacy systems on the back end. Firms increasingly rely on external resources. Fortythree percent of the respondents said that they were bringing third parties with new skill sets to help accelerate their mobile strategies. Given the skills challenge, over 50% of the respondents were using an external provider for help building apps (see Figure 7). They re also going outside for help evolving their strategy and keeping up with customer demands. Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013
6 FIGURE 7 Firms Rely On A Mix Of Internal Resources And Third Parties For Mobile Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013 priority on creating a more standardized interface on back-end systems in order to deliver more services and real-time integration to meet rising customer expectations (see Figure 8). In parallel, firms are rationalizing the legacy portfolio to limit the number of integration points and associated complexity and security vulnerabilities. Complexity No. 4: Implementing The Back End And External Integration To Deliver Full Value The last major issue that the research uncovered was on the back end. Keeping up with rising expectations and adapting their business systems via mobile triggers a significant amount of change to the installed base of back office and legacy systems. To provide the next generation of mobile applications, the traditional systems of record need to be integrated with the mobile front end to provide a complete and effective user experience: Firms are also looking to add more APIs to ease integration burden. Respondents are placing a high-tech Bigger budgets are planned to support more apps and back-end rework. Firms plan to increase their overall mobile budgets either from within IT or the business in order to scale up their applications portfolio in addition to changes to the traditional IT environment in areas like security and integration (see Figure 9). Interestingly, firms with a fully implemented strategy are more likely to be increasing mobile spending in the business units that were the drivers of creating that strategy.
7 FIGURE 8 Addressing Integration And Updating Security Are Top IT Priorities Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013 FIGURE 9 Strategy, Funding, And Hiring Top Firms Organizational Mobile To-Do List Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AT&T, August 2013
8 Key Recommendations The customer expectations that mobile has unleashed will act as a far-reaching catalyst for business and technology change within organizations. The four dimensions of complexity identified in this thought leadership paper begin to establish the scale of change organizations will have to make over the next three years. There are four key initiatives that executives can undertake now to begin the mobile transformation: Inventory all the different applications, underlying technologies, and external partners. Given mobile s broad scope, senior business and IT managers need to get a handle on the range of apps being developed and the technology choices that support them. If they don t, they will end up with the overlapping chaos and redundant investments that plagued the early days of ecommerce on the Web. Assemble the right internal and external teams to understand all the implications. No one group inside the org or company can go it alone. Firms have to build out a network of business partners as well as services firms that can help them make the broad set of strategy, process, user experience, and technology changes required to effectively meet customer, business partner, executive, and employee mobile expectations. Start creating hybrid skill teams. The survey clearly pointed out the growing skills challenge. Forrester believes that, to address it effectively, CIOs need to implement cross-training efforts modeled after the classic liberal arts education where staff major in UXP and minor in analytics or mobile development, or major in mobile development and minor in middleware. Build an engagement platform and common IT budget. The respondents highlighted the increasing integration challenge. Mobile pushes aging web architectures to the brink. The three-tier architecture built for a browser-led PC world can t flex, scale, or respond to the needs of a good mobile experience or the emerging requirements for connected products. Mobile s volatility and velocity of change require a distributed, four-tier architecture we call an engagement platform that separates technical capabilities into four parts: client, delivery, 2 aggregation, and services.
9 Appendix A: Methodology In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 165 organizations in North America and Europe to evaluate their mobile strategies. Survey participants included business managers responsible for mobile decision-making. Questions provided to the participants asked about their decision-making structure, perceptions, challenges, and priorities regarding mobile. Respondents were offered a small incentive as a thank you for time spent on the survey. The study began in July 2013 and was completed in August 2013. Appendix B: Endnotes 1 Source: Technology Management In The Age Of The Customer, Forrester Research, Inc., October 10, 2013 2 Source: Mobile Needs A Four-Tier Engagement Platform, Forrester Research, Inc., October 18, 2013.