Near 80 per cent of Australian organisations investing in mobility: IFS

Australian business are investing heavily in mobility, with the majority (79 per cent) doing so to increase productivity and lower costs.

Ths is according to the IFS Mobile ERP Survey Report, which also found that 51 per cent of business are doing it to stay competitive and 30 per cent do it to attract/retain talent.

The fact that this many companies are investing in mobility comes as no surprise, least of all to IFS global CEO, Alastair Sorbie.

“We have invested heavily in the last few years in that space, knowing full well that our customers were telling us that that’s where they are heading, and these results confirm the strategy that we’ve taken is the correct one,” he said.

The report also found that the most wanted mobile functionality among Australian respondents was CRM.

Mobile customer care/sales, integrated with the company’s CRM system, was chosen by 41 per cent of Australian respondents as the key focus for mobility investments in the future.

Sorbie attributes the popularity of mobile CRM to people are talking to their customer base on the move.

“They need access to up-to-date contact information and about the products they sell to customers,” he said.

For that reason, CRM is logically going to be high up on the list of functions to deploy on a mobile device.

“For us, so many of our customers have engineers and project managers on the road, and people working at large geographical sites make sense to be able to communicate with a system by using an intelligent device,” Sorbie said.

Other key results include security being the top obstacle for mobile solutions in of Australian organisations at 45 per cent, followed by cost at 37 per cent and poor user interfaces and 29 per cent.

With 41 per cent of Australian organisations are currently investing in mobile customer care/sales, more of IT budgets (12.4 per cent) was found to be spent on mobility solutions than by organisations in almost any other country, with 70 per cent admitting to this increasing in the next three years.

Off to the mines

In addition to releasing the survey, IFS has appointed professional service provider COSOL as its certified partner for the Australian mining industry.

IFS A/NZ managing director, Rob Stummer, said the decision came after the vendor spent the last few months looking for an industry partner to work within the mining resources space.

“We have a great solution for the industry but we don’t claim to be mining experts,” he said.

To that end, IFS went on the hunt for a group that could get certified by IFS and become a services/system integration partner as IFS made its push to mining and resources.

“Over the last 12 months, we have been in discussions about how that partnership might look, and recently we struck a deal where they will be a certified partner and work as a reseller for us as well,” Stummer said.

He admits COSOL are vendor agnostic and also work with some of IFS’ competitors, however COSOL are “heavily investing in getting their team up to speed.”

“They will have at least 20 consultants trained in IFS and the different modules within it,” he said.

“They certainly see an opening in the market for an alternative product, and given our success over the last few years, they felt it was timely to sign up with us and work very closely with us to go to market.”

Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.

Register now for the ARN Security Forum 2013 on June 4 at the Sydney Mint

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