The Elephant story may be old but it is quite relevant and reminds of working in silos without knowing what others are doing or what the common objectives and goals are.

Enterprise Mobility is not different from the Elephant Story. ERP solved the much needed integration of Enterprise Applications couple of decades back. Before the Enterprise Mobility matures to that extent, there are few key challenges that we have to accept, acknowledge and plan to convert them to positives. 

Goal Setting 

This must be at the forefront of all Enterprise Mobility Plans. In an urgency to meet customer (internal & external) demands, haste decisions are bound to take place. A high level strategic plan must be in place to address key factors consisting of but not limited to: 

a) Productivity - > Improve 
b) Efficiency - > Improve 

c) Business Process - > Streamline 

d) Cost - > Reduce

e) Resources - > Available 

Mobile First 

Various MADPs have certainly helped faster development and rollout of Mobile Apps. Though the challenges still remain on technology independence of these platforms, these platforms help in developing verticals and integrating Apps across Enterprises. 

While Apps may have shorter life span but the platforms on which these are built churn many Apps and hence have longer term business impact. Considering the following factors will help save cost, effort & time while choosing a Platform: 

a) Depth of Platform: Goals must match the features and not vice-versa 

b)Independence: Evaluate the independence it offers for crossplatform integration 

c)Deployment: Just not a simple closed infrastructure deployed anymore. It should give the flexibility to go beyond the scale of deploying in a DevOps and Cloud environment. 

d)Development Skills: Least of the priority but if you don't have this, you cannot convert your goals into reality. Evaluating if the skills needed to develop in a particular platform is either internally available, easily reskillable or available outside to hire easily, is a must to consider. 

Most of the platforms today offer native, web and hybrid platforms. But, it is good to check these factors as well. 

Legacy Applications

In an enterprise landscape, applications are developed and maintained over a long period of time, primarily due to changing business rules and technology stacks. These applications have humongous amount of invaluable data, which Big Data is trying to make sense out of. One of the big challenges for Enterprise mobility is to map such meaningful data from legacy applications and present it to all stakeholders for decision making. 

a)Data - Big Data AlgoW

b)Analyze - Results from Big Data 

c)Map - Mobility Apps for decision making 

Integration

Just not the upstream and downstream integration but backward and forward integration is as much important when considering Enterprise Mobility. It is important to have handshaking process for the following:

a)Legacy Applications: To bring in the intrinsic value of these applications 

b)Web Applications: Applications that are neither legacy nor on mobile 

c)Mobile Apps: Apps that were developed before choosing a platform. Porting it into a MADP platform is the best option. 

A proper integration plan will help redundancy & duplicity of data. 

Indium Software's EMM QA Framework, iEMM(pronounced - 'I am'), ensures an application rollout meets the goal and does not defeat the purpose. You don't need a Ferrari to drive to your downtown office to commute every day! An iEMM compliance ensures your Mobility Solution has a seamless integration, trustable reports and meets your goals.