Pioneering industries show the mobile way.
If large South African enterprises want to learn how to gain a competitive edge in the use of new technologies, they should pay close attention to industries that pioneer high-tech solutions.
This is one of the key insights to emerge from a new report, The Mobile Corporation in South Africa 2018, based on a research study conducted by World Wide Worx in partnership with enterprise software company SYSPRO.
“It’s obvious that industries at the cutting edge will be the first to prove or disprove the value of new uses of technology, but many companies are so focused on their own industries that they rarely make the effort to examine what is happening on the outside,” says Mark Wilson, Managing Director SYSPRO Africa.
The study showed that only 44% of large companies regard mobile solutions as important in their budgeting priorities. However, in industry sectors like IT Software and Services (65%), Health (67%) and Education (67%), which depend on keeping up with the latest trends and technologies, no less than two-thirds of companies were embracing these solutions.
The technologies that come up highest in IT budgeting priorities tend to be related to cloud computing, which now dominates IT strategy. Three of the top four are Software as a Service, or SAAS (69%), Cloud Computing in general (68.0%), and Virtualisation (62%).
The most important non-cloud technology is Virtual Private Networking, which comes in second, with 68.5% of large companies rating it as important. VPNs have become critical to ensuring secure access to company networks and services when staff are away from the office.
“Although it isn’t a mobile technology in itself, it has become key to the ability of the knowledge worker to go mobile, yet have full access to corporate information,” says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx. “In some cases, industries that are characterised by far-flung facilities have also become depended on VPNs for secure information sharing.”
For example, the Mining industry ranked VPNs, along with Converged Communications, as more important in their budgeting priorities than for any other industry. Mining was also second behind IT Software and Services in its ranking of Virtualisation – a technology that allows the creation of multiple virtual versions of a device within the same hardware device.
Advanced mobile software, like mobile ERP (enterprise resource planning) is currently being used by only 40% of large companies. Here, the Retail sector leads the way, with 57% of companies using such software, and 48% being heavy users. The IT industry follows closely, with 47% of respondents indicating heavy usage.
There were no industry differences, however, when companies were asked about the importance of various priorities for mobile access: 82% of all companies saw mobile access as critical to receiving email out of the office. Being available in emergencies ranked second, at 72%, while both keeping up with office activity and organising time followed closely at 68%.
“It all comes down to efficiency and effectiveness,” says Wilson. “If the technology makes the business as a whole more efficient, and its individual users more effective in doing their jobs, then it will make the business more competitive.”
Edited by Fundisiwe Maseko
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