Company Leaders Believe in Mobile Technology, But Many Hesitate to Incorporate It

While more and more businesses are planning to integrate mobile technology into their business operations, a recent survey indicates actually doing it is not a simple process.

In fact, although 78 percent of CIOs have a strategy to expand mobile technology use, 86 percent aren’t doing much about it, according to the survey commissioned by Mobile Helix, a mobile security vendor.

The biggest reason behind the lack of action is the complexity of the business environment. It’s not always easy to integrate mobile technology into current workflows when you consider costs, support, security, legacy applications and other issues that can pop up, survey respondents said.

While CIOs see the value in mobile technology, they also see plenty of issues as workers begin to use mobile devices to get the job done.

“For businesses, this means some serious changes as more workers than ever shift from being tied to a desktop or laptop PC to connecting to files from anywhere,” writes Drew Hendricks for Forbes. “This not only enables workers to connect to presentations and documents from anywhere, but it also opens up new concerns for the businesses interested in protecting data.”

The concerns about protecting valuable company information are directly related to the gray area created by mobile technology between work and personal life. While that capability offers certain advantages, it also brings up new concerns.

"[CIOs] know they need to do adopt mobile, but they have so many security concerns,” explained Matt Berry, director, demand generation and client experience for IBM MobileFirst. Those security concerns are magnified by the variety of safeguards required, which also depend on the mobile operating system used by the device.

“Mobility has the potential to disrupt business in much the same way as the Internet, but at the moment, cost and complexity challenges lead people to frequently ignore the enormous possibilities available," said Matt Bancroft, Mobile Helix president.

While the cautious approach is understandable, industry experts recommend that forward-thinking companies shouldn’t let the obstacles prevent them from moving forward.

“Cost concerns are understandable, given that widespread enterprise mobility is still in its infancy,” Bancroft continued, “yet if CIOs make the right long-term choices today, they can generate significant returns for their business.”

The survey was conducted by Vanson Bourne and included responses from 200 U.S. and 100 U.K. CIOs, all of which worked for organizations with 1,001 or more employees in a variety of industries.