Techaisle Analyst Insights

Emerging Trend - SMB IT Specialists empowering business units, blurring the IT-Business divide

Techaisle’s study on “360 on SMB & Mid-Market IT Decision Making Authority - BDM vs. ITDM” reveals an emerging trend of IT specialists with purchase authority being resident within business units and reporting to business rather than IT management. The data is significant enough for marketers to pay close attention as the survey shows that already in 21 percent of small (1-99 employees) and 36 percent of midsized (100-999 employees) businesses IT Specialists are embedded within business units and even more are planning to hire specialists within their business units. Further, the study also shows that these IT specialists are an important influence point for new IT solutions purchase and that in 29 percent of small businesses and 49 percent of mid-sized firms that have “business unit resident IT specialists” these staff members are the primary decision makers for new IT solution purchases. This trend will naturally tilt the balance of decision making authority towards business management by empowering them with knowledge and decision-making agility.

The need for IT and business to work together to ensure that all stages of IT adoption process meet both technical and business process requirements is an important factor in IT solution success. Survey data clearly demonstrates that SMBs have taken this a step further to address the need for what is sometimes referred to as “double deep” employees (with respect to IT and business experience) by positioning IT specialists within business units reporting to business (rather than IT) management. In a way these IT Specialists reporting to Business Management in SMBs are blurring the IT and Business divide.

Small businesses - informal

The trend is widespread and informal in small businesses in the 10-99 employee size categories with 45 percent of firms reporting the presence of IT specialists within business units. In most cases this is an informal connection with IT-savvy employees responsible for IT-dependent processes.

Mid-market businesses - pronounced

However, within mid-sized businesses the trend is more pronounced and is becoming a more conscious strategy with IT support embedded within the line of business departments. As the balance of IT decision making authority continues to shift towards business decision makers the presence of IT specialists who can identify appropriate IT solutions within a mid-market business unit is gaining tremendous relevance. This also means that rogue implementations of solutions may well accelerate. More importantly, in the next 3-5 years it is highly likely that a business unit will begin to think and operate like an IT department as they learn from their missteps.

IT or BDM-led Solutions

To understand an SMB buyer’s journey Techaisle research considered nine IT solution categories and the influence of various stakeholders from needs identification to selection and adoption process. At a high-level the nine IT solutions were found to belong to one of three categories – IT-led solutions, areas where IT is generally seen as leading corporate IT initiatives; BDM-led solutions, solutions in which BDMs provide most corporate leadership, and IT is cast very much in a supporting role; and IT/BDM collaborative solutions that respond to BDM needs, but where IT is important to supporting delivery capacity. The positioning of these solutions is important to shaping the focus of IT vendor sales and marketing initiatives.

It is important for IT suppliers to understand whether their current and prospective accounts have IT specialists assigned within business units, and where they do, to establish strong relationships that will enable the supplier to understand and respond to IT/business solution demand.

About the Study: 360 on SMB & Mid-Market IT Decision Making Authority - BDM vs. ITDM

To understand the current state and implications of distributed IT influence and authority Techaisle conducted a unique survey of SMB organizations where we surveyed roughly equal numbers of business decision makers (BDMs) and IT decision makers (ITDMs) across seven employee size categories, and then analyzed results to create a unified view of the new IT decision authority realities.

The study covers:

• Stakeholders and their roles in end-to-end IT solution adoption

• ITDM vs. BDM : Balance of Authority (Needs, Budget, Purchasing)

• ITDM & BDM: Locus of Leadership in driving different types of IT Solution Adoption

• ITDM & BDM: Leadership roles in securing Cloud, Mobility

• ITDM vs. BDM: Success Attributes and Benefits of Cloud & Mobility Solutions

• SMB & Mid-Market Businesses: Shadow IT Spending

• Business Impact of BDM vs. ITDM perspectives and expectations with respect to IT Solutions

• ITDM vs. BDM: Differences in Business Issues, IT Challenges, IT Priorities

We all know that Tablet usage within small businesses (1-99 employees) has been on the rise. As per several Techaisle surveys the penetration rates of Tablet adoption varies from 12 percent to over 30 percent in some countries within small businesses. Techaisle surveys also definitely show that Tablets are largely being used as add-ons to traditional PCs, however there is some incidence of notebooks in particular being replaced by tablets in mobile scenarios. While most repeat tablet purchases are intended to be add-ons to existing PCs, larger Small Businesses have expressed a desire to replace existing notebooks with these devices. This is indicative of a desire but the actual decision will likely be driven by a more logical analysis of capabilities of both devices over the near term. The use of Tablets within small businesses has spread from corner offices and executive suites to a broader adoption within rank and file workers to support line of business and productivity applications. Although the Senior Management and the Sales Executive Personnel are the prime users of Tablets, it is found that among the larger size businesses IT Departments are increasingly using Tablets as they work towards application customization and management of tablets.

Techaisle’s surveys in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, UK, and the US show there are two clear stages of application usage within small businesses.

• Discovery stage – where only basic applications are used. Initial adopters start with Emails, Internet Search, Social Media, and Productivity applications but quickly transition to Deployment stage.

• Deployment stage – in this stage small businesses guided by enhance productivity and motivated by Tablet’s mobility start deploying business related applications.

A comparison of applications being deployed by small businesses across different countries:

Looking at the above data it becomes quite obvious that sales, collaboration, and line of business applications come to the fore-front of most small businesses for Tablet deployments.

Small businesses are giving a clear signal to ISVs that developing for Tablets better be on their product road map. Over one-third of small business using Tablets are also planning to develop custom apps for Tablets, and over three-fourth say that it is very important for ISVs to develop enterprise level applications to support Tablets.

The scenarios change slightly for Smartphone application deployment where payment processing appears more often across most countries, but that is a topic of another discussion.

Detailed SMB Mobility Adoption & Trends reports are available for purchase for each country Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Australia, Germany, UK, and the US. If interested please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

A common SMB usage scenario

An IT administrator of a small business gets a call from an employee saying that he lost his iPad with customer billing info, specs of recent architecture drawing; corporate emails and he did not even have a lock in the iPad. What can the IT Administrator do? This is where Codeproof comes into picture. With Codeproof, the IT Administrator could have remotely located the iPad, locked it and even remotely erased the iPad thereby preventing any data-theft.

A common barrier to Mobility Adoption within SMBs

The need for device and data security for mobile devices is an important deterrent in mobility adoption, especially as consumer and business apps converge onto the same devices. Nevertheless mobility is here to stay but going down the route of mobility is also fraught with unexpected surprises – most important being accidental loss of device with company data, employee walking off with device or malware creating havoc with the device.  Many surveys conducted by Techaisle reveal that SMBs worry about these issues a lot but fail to protect themselves adequately. For example, 69 percent of SMB IT Decision makers in the US are concerned about accidental loss of devices containing sensitive data. And nearly 1/3rd of these decision makers are also concerned about inability to manage device configurations so that they comply with company policies. To top it all, there is the issue of managing employee devices that businesses did not buy.

Techaisle survey of 9,500 SMBs across different geographies show that accidental loss of device followed by imminent danger of mobile viruses are the top concerns of SMBs while using mobile applications. This also clearly demonstrates the need for remote mobile device management, authentication, and remote erasure of data.

 

The above data clearly demonstrates the need for remote management, authentication, and remote erasure of data on mobile devices. Data no longer resides on tethered devices such as desktops but is spread across multiple devices that “move”. SMBs need to plan for it to make mobility an enjoyable and productive experience.

Codeproof is a simple to use, Cloud-based, SaaS, Freemium model MDM

In four easy steps Codeproof MDM is up and running on iOS and Android devices. A Seattle-based company, Codeproof offers an integrated BYOD security and mobile device management platform specially targeted at small and medium businesses. Some of its main mobile security features are App-white listing, Malware protection and Mobile policy management. It is built on Amazon EC2 elastic cloud for scalability, anytime, anywhere access.

An admin can enroll all mobile devices to Codeproof by installing and enrolling Codeproof App on the device. As the devices get enrolled via the mobile Copdeproof app, the devices automatically appear in Codeproof Cloud console tree. The admin can now remotely manage all devices from Cloud console. When an employee leaves the company, the admin just deletes the corresponding employee MDM profiles (WiFi profiles, Email Profiles, etc.) thus disabling the devices from accessing any type of corporate data.

Codeproof is free for 2 devices and is priced at only 29.99$ per device per year. It is worth a try.

I first met Jag Randhawa at Dell World. It was a meeting organized by Dell Analyst Relations to showcase Dell’s Cloud Business Applications. Unbeknownst to Dell Analyst Relations, we hardly discussed Dell. What struck me immediately was his smiling demeanor and an earnest desire to be a champion of business innovation and his views on what IT could do to spur growth through employee involvement and implementing new technology ideas.

We re-connected, ten months later at his office.

Jag Randhawa is the VP of IT at CAMICO Mutual Insurance Company, an SMB with slightly less than 100 employees. And he is the quintessential CIO who loves his job, his company and his fellow colleagues. He also showers high praise on Dell’s customer intimacy, likes VMware’s virtualization solutions and embraces Open source.

Specifically, he uses Dell for Network, Switches, PCs, Servers, Storage and is purchasing Microsoft Software. From VMWare, he uses their server virtualization technologies and software like VMotion and inventory management software for managing all the VM servers.

Cloud Focus

His is a Dell shop, to the extent that he has replaced all existing storage and security solutions with those from Dell. He and his IT team of twelve do not work with any channel partners. His philosophy – whichever applications that can be pushed to the cloud without compromising security of his customer data, just do it. And he has done it; CAMICO is using 12 cloud applications which are:

1. SalesForce.com – Sales Management

1. SilverPop – Marketing Automation

1. Nexure – Agency Management Solution

1. Acuity – Legal Partners Expense Management

1. DocuSign – Electronic Signature

1. LearnLive – Webinar Broadcasting and Training

1. ADP/HCM – Payroll and Human Capital Management

1. Skype – IM and Video

1. Paypal and Total Biller Solution – Credit Card Payment Gateways

1. Concur - Travel Expense Management

1. RingCentral – Telephony

1. MailRoute – Email Spam Filter

Business Perspective Focus

To increase employee engagement and help grow the business, he created a Bottom-up Innovation Program at CAMICO, in which employees submit ideas to grow the top-line, increase operational efficiencies, improve customer service, enhance business processes, and reduce cost. This program has generated many valuable ideas, and as a result he is embarking on two of his most ambitious business focused IT projects.

1. Using Open Source for eCommerce solutions

1. Developing a Big Data Proof of Concept

Both of the projects are still in infancy stage and they are both being developed using Open Source. To explain further on the eCommerce solution initiative, he says, “We currently host our website and members-only extranet using Oracle Portal, and now we are planning to use Drupal for our website and another open source software for extranet, which is yet to be determined. Our website and extranet also have eCommerce capabilities embedded in it, so we will be porting our eCommerce into this new Open Source portal”.

He is most excited about the big data project which is his initiative to provide actionable insights and perspectives for the business management at CAMICO. When I asked him about the key objective of working on a big data project, he said, “We are experimenting with Big Data using many of the Open Source software to analyze and find correlations among loss trends. The first objective is to find loss causes in our current data and subsequently use these findings to better underwrite future risks.”

Employee Engagement Focus

As mentioned earlier, The Bottom-up Innovation Program was his brain child. The program encourages all employees to submit ideas that could add value to customers or the business. Employees observe their environment, listen to customers, and bring their outside experiences as consumers to generate ideas that could benefit the company or customers. These ideas are validated, refined and prioritized by a committee of fellow employees. For every accepted and implemented idea, employees are recognized for their contributions through intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. This program makes employees more an integral part of the company, thereby increasing employee engagement and retention. The program has become such a success that he is invited to speak at several industry events for the benefit of other organizations. He not only speaks about the concept but also explains the implementation mechanics and expected outcomes of the program.

Overcoming business challenges

Similar to most other CIOs, he and his team have a long list of IT initiatives but the top four initiatives for 2014 and beyond are:

1. Replace Website, Members-Only and eCommerce platform

1. Use Big Data for analyzing current and future risks

1. Move more infrastructure solutions into the cloud

1. Build targeted Mobile solutions

But there are enough challenges that his team (he detests the word “staff”) has to overcome. As per Jag, the biggest challenge for any IT department is money and talent. He elaborates on his statement, “There is never enough money to do everything we want to do. However in my view, if there is a business justification for an expense, money is never an issue. The definition of business justification is, for every dollar spent how much money the new solution is going to make or save? There are times when you cannot find direct or immediate benefits, so you have to find creative ways to show value and sell new ideas. Cloud applications make it easier to try new solutions without heavy upfront commitment”. To qualify, he quickly states that the big data project was unscripted and not budgeted but he was able to create a business value which catapulted it to be among the top four IT initiatives.

Business Focused CIO

He is very clear in his mind that there has never been a better time to be a CIO. And he has a message for other IT leaders, “Technology has become an integral part of the business. IT leaders should always be thinking of how they can leverage technology to create competitive advantage, grow the business and create operational efficiencies.” As if on cue, he recites what he practices:

1. Partner with business peers. Look for ways to help them achieve their goals faster using technology.

1. There is no IT project; every project is a business initiative. If you want funding for any initiative, figure out how it adds value to the business.

1. Find partners who will help you showcase the value of technology.

1. Above all, build credibility with your peers by providing excellent service.

Way to go.