Bob Egan, founder of Sepharim Research Group, says that mobile cloud is a wise choice for business investment. It enhances your staff’s ability to perform their jobs and allows you to dominate your market by targeting your competitors’ weaknesses.

• Interconnected Technologies
• Why IT Decision-Makers Should Embrace Cloud
• Mobile Cloud is about ROI, Not Savings
• The Key to Tesla’s Success
• Using Mobile Cloud to Attract New Business

Interconnected Technologies

As two key components of computing’s third platform, cloud computing and mobile devices are growing and improving hand-in-hand. Cloud’s ultra-fast storage and delivery of data has greatly expanded the possibilities with tablets, phones, and e-readers. In turn, the need for mobile-friendly technology has increased the use of cloud computing.

These dual, integrally connected tools make digital life more fluid and adaptable, both for companies and for consumers. If you want to consider the full impact of cloud and mobile, it’s important not to think in terms of the raw technology but instead in terms of what your business will be able to achieve if you embrace them to a greater extent.

Bob Egan, who is the founder and chief research officer at Sepharim Research Group, believes that the third platform is critical so that businesses aren’t outperformed by rival businesses. He also thinks that companies sometimes hesitate to fully adopt use of mobile devices; instead, they should be facilitating their broader implementation among all users.

Below are a few of Egan’s thoughts:

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Why IT Decision-Makers Should Embrace Mobile Cloud

Mobile is about creating revenue for the company and building the brand, but you obviously want to know it’s worth it. Egan recommends two ways to check your return-on-investment (ROI). “One is the dollar return on revenue per employee that’s been mobile-enabled versus those who are not,” he says, “And look at the dollar return on the base assets that you have.” You also want to consider your assets in relationship to those of other firms in your sector.

How is that done? Take the example of the United States Postal Service (USPS) in comparison to Box, and Tesla in comparison to General Motors. The value per asset at the Postal Service is $2.80, while the same figure is an incredible $3630 at box. The value for each employee at the USPS is $113K, while it’s $1.4M at Box. In the car industry, you see a similar phenomenon: Tesla’s value for each asset is $11, while GM’s is just $1.85. Similarly, the value per employee is $2.9M at Tesla, versus $240K at General Motors.

Mobile Cloud is about ROI, Not Savings

Don’t think of cloud or mobile as an expense, advises Egan. “One of the big mistakes that a lot of organizations have continued to be plagued by in terms of innovation investment is that they still put IT on the expense side, the balance sheet,” he says, “rather than as an organizational weapon on the revenue side.”

Remember that, by creating greater engagement and access with your users, mobile builds revenue. It’s a form of business development, not a standard expense.

The Key to Tesla’s Success

It’s easy to see from the above examples that the more innovative companies have much better return on their assets than some of the old-school enterprises. The incumbent businesses tend to have lots of assets and a vast bureaucracy of employees. Plus, they have to monitor and maintain their internal networks and hardware that’s housed in on-premises datacenters.

The newer and more cutting-edge organizations don’t have huge amounts of equipment or personnel, notes Egan. However, “they do weight themselves in distribution and analytics,” he says. “They create ways to anticipate the needs of customers in more proactive ways.”

Using Mobile Cloud to Attract New Business

Making your business more mobile-ready isn’t just about making lives easier for your employees and boosting productivity, of course. It’s also about leveraging tools for competitive advantage and to get more customers.

Egan says the best way to look at new technologies is to think of them in terms of a portfolio. Within that portfolio are cloud, security advances, mobility, analytics, the Internet of Things, and big data.

With this portfolio of innovative tools, cutting-edge firms are able to analyze the top companies in their market and formulate the most powerful attack. Egan explains: “If you have a new-idea company that takes a look at a particular [incumbent] and says, ‘You know, … [t]hey really haven’t made the move to the cloud. Let’s go attack them at that front with a suite of services, and go try and steal the customers.’”

In other words, the mobile cloud, along with related technologies, gives you the agility, speed, and power to build your business both internally and externally.