ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- A new report released by IBM (NYSE: IBM ) provides guidance for businesses on how to unlock the potential of enterprise mobility by empowering employees with the tools they need to make decisions, collaborate, transact and innovate in entirely new ways.

The report, titled "The Individual Enterprise – How Mobility Redefines Business," developed by the IBM Institute for Business Value emphasizes how the power of analytics-driven mobile strategies can redefine business and how work gets done. While many organizations recognize the potential impact of mobile, few have the foundation in place to capitalize on the power of mobile and data analytics.

Eighty-four percent of CIOs rate mobile solutions as a critical investment to get closer to customers¹ and 94 percent of CMOs ranked mobile apps as crucial to their digital marketing plans.² While the C-suite is considering mobile applications that are customer facing, the greater opportunity exists in the enterprise to impact the way people work, collaborate and innovate.

"Currently most enterprise mobile use has been restricted to email, calendaring and instant messaging," said Saul Berman, vice president and chief strategist in IBM Global Business Services. "Consider how combining mobile devices and cognitive analytics can completely transform how we work, industries operate and companies perform. Getting started with this new imperative requires leaders who can define what this journey will look like and champion a call to action."

A successful mobile initiative will allow employees to access relevant information and insights when and where needed, as well as the ability to address a critical industry pain point or create fundamental new value; weigh outcomes using analytics and data streams; and focus on leading edge features of innovative mobile devices.

According to the research, evolving to a mobile enterprise requires a solid foundation with fundamental components including:

• Security: Employ centralized device management and security to overcome the fragmented device platforms resulting from existing "bring your own device" (BYOD) programs.
• Connectivity: Minimize platform complexities introduced with 'always-on' mobile networks in conjunction with flexible architectures that can easily incorporate changing components.
• Resiliency: Design for possible failures with adequate disaster recovery and contingency plans, and align policies to business values and needs.
• Orchestration: Adopt interchangeable solutions to create efficiencies and enable both organizations and individuals to quickly combine and recombine different applications and data streams based on actual circumstances. 
• Insights and Learning: Embrace intelligence produced from analytics to grow more responsive and learn on the fly, ultimately enabling predicative and prescriptive recommendations that further inform decision making.

Once the foundation for enterprise mobility has been laid, the report outlines five steps to progress the strategy including the development of "journey maps" that depict employee/user interactions. These steps are live experiments that can be improved and expanded upon based on employee experiences.

IBM's 5,000 mobile experts have been at the forefront of mobile enterprise innovation. IBM has secured more than 4,300 patents in mobile, social and security, which have been incorporated into IBM MobileFirst solutions that enable enterprise clients to radically streamline and accelerate mobile adoption, help organizations engage more people and capture new markets. Through IBM's partnership with Apple, the two organizations are transforming enterprise mobility with a new class of industry specific business apps.

IBM has also established the world's deepest portfolio in Big Data and Analytics consulting and technology expertise based on experiences drawn from more than 40,000 data and analytics client engagements. This analytics portfolio spans research and development, solutions, software and hardware, and includes more than 15,000 analytics consultants, 4,000 analytics patents, 6,000 industry solution business partners, and 400 IBM mathematicians who are helping clients use big data to transform their organizations.

For more information on IBM MobileFirst, visit the press kit or www.ibm.com/mobilefirst.

For more information on the study and the IBM Institute for Business Value, visit http://www.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership.

About IBM MobileFirst

IBM's 5,000 mobile experts have been at the forefront of mobile enterprise innovation. IBM has secured more than 4,300 patents in mobile, social and security, which have been incorporated into IBM MobileFirst solutions that enable enterprise clients to radically streamline and accelerate mobile adoption, help organizations engage more people and capture new markets. Through IBM's partnership with Apple, the two organizations are transforming enterprise mobility with a new class of industry specific business apps. For more information on IBM MobileFirst, visit the press kit or www.ibm.com/mobilefirst. Follow @IBMMobile on Twitter, and see IBM MobileFirst on YouTube, Tumblr and Facebook.

Sources
1 - Moving from the back office to the front lines, IBM IBV; http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/en/c-suite/csuitestudy2013/cio-infographic.html
2 - Stepping up to the challenge, IBM IBV; http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/en/c-suite/csuitestudy2013/cmo-infographic.html

Contact Information
Jeannine Kilbride
IBM Media Relations
1 (860) 997-6277
jkilbri@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE IBM