Study: Executives conflicted over mobile strategy

Marketers want more power over IT plans but the C-suite begs to differ

VARs that find their mobile-initiative pitches falling a little flat may want to look at the growing tensions among IT decision-makers complicating business mobile strategies inside their key client organisations.

According to a new survey from UK analyst firm Vanson Bourne and sponsored by German provider Netbiscuits, conflict among CIOs, CMOs and other corporate executives is creating mobility obstacles centred on business motivations and jurisdiction.

The survey of 300 IT decision makers in the UK and the US found that the C-level executives differ widely on responsibility for - and use of - mobile technologies in the workplace.

For example, more than half (51 per cent) of chief marketing officers that were asked said they should have greater ownership of their company's mobile web strategy than their CIOs.

Only 18 per cent of CIOs felt marketing should have greater sway over mobile strategies.

Proportionally nearly 20 per cent more marketing chiefs (53 per cent) than CIOs (35 per cent) said giving customers more channels for interaction is a critical priority.

Forty-four per cent of the CMOs surveyed said that improving customer online engagement is critical while just 29 per cent of CIOs felt the same way.

Meanwhile 86 per cent of CIOs queried said they are more concerned with boosting the bottom line revenue via increased mobile-platform sales.

The aggressive stance of the CMOs is changing the internal conversation about mobility in many organisations, the researchers opined.

The fracture in the C-suite over ownership of mobile strategies has about a third of CIOs and other C-level execs calling for joint ownership of such initiatives.

But the CMOs were holding firm. Only nine per cent of marketing executives polled said joint ownership of the mobile strategy is desirable.

That's a telling figure, considering that CMOs currently enjoy sole ownership of their company's mobile strategies in only about 21 per cent of organisations.

The conflict filtered down to some highly technical areas that could affect the reliability and security of mobile app development in the enterprise.

While 74 per cent of CIOs said that testing is critically or very important to the success of a mobile web strategy, fewer than half of CMOs felt the same way about quality assurance measures.

The takeaway, according to Netbiscuits staff, is that the CIO focus on technology and standardisation mixed with the CMO's bias towards customer experience create a need for both disciplines to work together.

"Mobile web strategy must be based on clear, common business objectives with targets defined in both the CIO and CMO areas," said Daniel Weisbeck, CMO and COO of Netbiscuits.

"The real battle to watch therefore is not between the CIO and the CMO, but whether a joint CMO-CIO approach or a dedicated function approach provides the best mechanism to align customer experience objectives with the technical challenges of delivering these goals.

"A successful combination of their approaches and motivations provides the real basis for an extremely strong mobile strategy," Weisbeck said.

As part of our special editorial partnership, CRN is republishing this article by Channelnomics