More than three-quarters (77 percent) of executives noted that security issues are the top concern for achieving their mobility goals, according to findings from application management and security specialist Apperian’s 2014 Executive Enterprise Mobility Report, which was conducted by Gatepoint Research.
More than 70 percent of respondents said they plan to equip more than 1,000 users with mobile apps and 33 percent of respondents said they are deploying mobile apps to more than 5,000 users in the next two years.
Issues with managing mobility programs are one of the top concerns of respondents, with 37 percent citing how to determine return on investment (ROI) and 35 percent citing lack of management tools as important challenges.
Another important challenge is security–70 percent of respondents are still unable to detect data or device loss, suggesting a lack of mobile security initiative despite the key concern.
The report also revealed that companies most satisfied with their mobility investments put more emphasis on custom mobile apps, robust enterprise app stores and app management capabilities as well as offering bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies for workers.
Respondents with the highest amount of satisfaction with mobile adoption rely on a help desk (66 percent), a BYOD policy (60 percent), app management software (60 percent) and promoting apps internally (40 percent).
Following those respondents were businesses offering enterprise app stores (31 percent), and using leading-edge tactics like gamification (11 percent) as strategies to drive adoption among employees.
The survey findings also indicated the main benefits of enterprise mobility is increased employee satisfaction (60 percent) and a competitive advantage (55 percent).
The survey polled 100 select executives such as directors, vice presidents and other chief executives in organizations actively engaged with mobile technology.
Survey respondents represented very large firms (81 percent of participants came from companies with annual revenues in excess of $500 million) in a range of industries, including financial and business services, utilities, retail and manufacturing.
“The report sheds light on important issues that executives at a range of companies embracing enterprise mobility face,” David Patrick, CEO at Apperian, said in a statement. “As mobility in the enterprise continues to gain adoption, defining the optimal enterprise mobility strategy is absolutely critical and the information gained in this study will benefit all who lead mobility initiatives.”
Apperian has also created a supplementary online guide that explores the issues that organizations face when planning for enterprise app development and deployment.
The hands-on guide offers practical tips, guidance and frameworks for building and rolling out mobile apps throughout the enterprise, and includes tools to help with project planning and examples to get started promoting and marketing apps internally.