Inside Looking Out: An Executive View on Enterprise Mobility With John Bruce

Welcome to the latest edition of Inside Looking Out. I recently had the opportunity to have a chat with John Bruce, Chairman of Quickcomm Software Solutions.  I originally met John at the end of last year over a cup of coffee.  I really appreciated that conversation because John’s background afforded him a wonderfully holistic view on enterprise mobility and mobility management.  John and I “sat down” last week for a very informative discussion.  Here’s the “transcript.”

The Enterprise Mobility Foundation: Hi John, it’s great speaking with you again.  Let me jump right in with a rather direct/blunt question. Is Wireless Expense Management just about cost savings?

John Bruce: Absolutely not. It’s that tag ‘expense’ that really makes us look at this myopically. We generally talk about a process that’s for purchase to pay, capturing the complete cycle from users procuring devices, through provisioning and onto subsequent invoice management. To call it expense management is a misnomer. Maybe Wireless Asset management might be a better way to go…particularly as we see companies deploying increasingly sophisticated devices and applications wirelessly. You can see a time not too distant when the carriers will be providing laptop devices free of charge for companies who sign up for multi-year plans.

EMF: Many organizations are debating currently who should be responsible for their enterprise mobility strategy. Where do you think mobility should reside in an organization?  The IT department? Legal? Finance? Telecom?

JB: Great question. It’s certainly no longer an expense management question, which would imply ‘finance’. And the IT department doesn’t generally get the challenges in telecomm. But I do think that’s where it ends up. We seem to be on a transitional path from finance to IT.

EMF: So do you think mobility should be its own stand-alone silo within organizations?

JB: Another Absolutely Not. I’ve seen some companies treat them as separate challenges, but that’s a solution of convenience. It has some particular attributes that need specialist attention and keeping it compartmentalized might seem an expedient way to manage. But it’s only a matter of time before it’s rolled into the overall company infrastructure and expense strategy.

EMF: Another increasingly hot topic in mobility these days is the convergence of fixed and wireless communications.  I’m thinking about mobile unified communications and FMC solutions.  How do you see that playing out?  Is the desk line (and its costs) reaching the end of its rope?

JB: The 64,000 dollar question. For most practical communications applications, mobile is fine. But we’re a long way from having bandwidth and dependable connectivity up to the job of mission critical tasks. Fixed line still represents about 80% of what we’re managing for customers, but we seem to be spending a heavily weighted amount of time and resources getting ahead of the issues and opportunities that mobile presents.

EMF: Individual liability is probably the most heated debate these days.  In the corporate liable model, organizations need to track their mobile inventory for asset management purposes.  Is asset management relevant in the IL world?

JB: Yes, asset management is definitely relevant in the IL world. If employees are going to be running corporate communications through their personal devices, then it really is important to keep your arms around the asset. I doubt that IL based environments would feel comfortable that employees can lose devices containing sensitive corporate information and not have any technical preventatives in place. Particularly if the concern’s compounded by that information not only containing corporate information, but client data too.

EMF: Should organizations care about expense management in the IL space?  Why not just give everyone a fixed stipend and/or no longer reimburse the employees for their wireless usage and “be done with it”?

JB: That’s an easy fix for the expense management exposure, possibly one of the major attractions to actually going for IL. I do think that potentially it’s trading a problem that can be managed using the right TEM tool, for a potentially much more ‘expensive’ one in promoting a phone number that can walk out the door. Employees are basically building their own brand within the company’s customer base and taking it with them when they leave. I can’t imagine that businesses would entertain the idea of employees using their own email addresses rather than the company issued one, for conducting company business. Somewhat the same for IL mobile devices.

EMF: One last question.  I’m not a big fan of the term “enterprise” mobility because SMBs may perceive they don’t fit in to the equation.  I’ll argue that they too need to be concerned about their mobility strategies.  Is there a “sweet spot” in your mind in terms of how SMBs should handle mobility deployments?

JB: I do agree with you that ‘enterprise’ implies that smaller companies aren’t equally challenged or as positively impacted by mobile deployments. And they’re generally less able to apply the right resources or skills to the job in hand.  Quickcomm’s sweet spot is the larger environments, so we’re not too focused on the smaller end of the market.  We do have a SaaS distribution model, alongside our sales of software, which is where I see SMBs are better looking for solutions. Having a vendor look after the operational issues is definitely more appealing to smaller accounts.  SMBs can also have landline ATE’s in the millions of dollars per year, with a small constituency of mobile users. Those mobile environments are often not much bigger than a medium sized company would be stand alone, but the ability to blend your mobile assets along with landlines on one platform offers some really powerful advantages to users.

Thanks so much John for taking the time to speak with me today.  If interested, you can connect with John via LinkedIn here.  Do you know anyone who should be a guest here on Inside Looking Out? Drop us a line.