5 Methods For Measuring Enterprise Mobility ROI

Measured Currency by Bill Brooks CC-BY-2.0

Measuring enterprise mobility ROI figures isn’t always the easiest task to accomplish. Enterprise mobile apps tout huge benefits, such as gains in productivity, simpler collaboration, and improving sales enablement.

Let’s assume all of these benefits appeal to you, so you give enterprise mobility a shot.  The following data points should be measured in order to effectively determine the value that mobility brings to your company.

1. Adoption Rate: The more end-users who are actively using your mobile app to enhance their day-to-day activities, the higher the probability that it will impact outlier processes and drive bottom line results. You can have the snazziest app in the world, but if no one is using it there is no really no benefit. One of the most attractive aspects of enterprise mobile apps is their ability to drive collaboration and facilitate best practice sharing across your internal teams; the larger the group, the more robust the collaboration. Make sure that you advocate the benefits of using the app, ensure that it coincides with offline business processes, and guarantee that the content within your app is up to date and valuable. In order to gain this end-user visibility, it’s essential that your apps have integrated reporting capabilities.
2. Identify A “Control” Process: My high school chemistry teacher used to always say that every good experiment has to have a control, meaning a variable that is constant. Identify your control process, or set of multiple control processes, to use as a method of comparison. Compile these stats during the few months leading up to your mobile app deployment and then revisit the stats a few months post-deployment to see how mobile enablement has impacted them. You can then gauge the overall effectiveness of your mobile strategy (or even identify niche processes that may or may not be translating appropriately).
3. Project Turnaround: This is a more general productivity measure.  How much time is your sales staff saving in meeting prep, data gathering, and presentation creation due to the app?  How reliant is the app as a time saver? Your enterprise mobility app should be eliminating most of the busywork that comes with information updates.
4. Customer Interaction Effectiveness: If your mobile app is specifically geared towards sales enablement, you’ll also need to measure how your app enhances client interactions, allows you to “tailor as you talk,” and reinforces your brand/messaging parameters. You should also check in with your reps so they can give you feedback as to whether or not the tool is helping them create a better dialogue during their pitch. Simply put, your mobile sales enablement app should result in more closed deals.
5. Solution Creation Turnaround: This will be something that you’ll want to look into when deciding on a mobile enterprise solution provider. If they’re creating an app for you and it will take 3-6 months before you even get to see the finished product, keep shopping. Make sure that you can get your hands on and start making your money back as soon as possible.  Mediafly has been known to crank out a mobile enterprise platform in just a few weeks. Shameless promotion aside, a mobile app must be a solution and not an added hassle.

What metrics are you looking at to measure your enterprise mobility ROI?