Feature Article: Mobile Computing Explosion

By Gennifer Biggs, Business Solutions magazine.

As mobility evolves from a cool technology to a must-have for businesses of every size, solutions providers must move from providing devices to offering a full mobile computing strategy. Daugherty Business Solutions, which counts Anheuser-Busch among its clients, recommends tailoring mobility strategy — and subsequent hardware and software deployments — to your customers' business needs, not just delivering the latest, greatest technology tricks.

Daugherty Business Solutions, a large IT consulting firm that also deploys solutions to its mainly midmarket and enterprise customers, launched a full mobility division about a dozen years ago. Daugherty's mobile solutions group integrates consultative services with hardware and software, often customized, to support the strategies created for customers by the division. "Our thinking and approach has been that we are a professional consulting firm that helps our customers best leverage emerging tech," explains Ron Daugherty, CEO of Daugherty Business Solutions. While hardware and software are a component of that business, he believes that there are steps to a solid mobility solution: Identify the business problem or process involved (what is your client trying to improve on with mobility?); determine what, if any, mobile computing solution will resolve that problem; then research and recommend hardware/software needed to meet that objective. Because many mobility sales are pushed forward by the wave of consumerism impacting business technology today, it behooves solutions providers to slow down mobility conversations to determine the problem before a device decision is reached.