Multinationals need to take more responsibility for managing mobile costs and services

LONDON, UK: In a new report, Ovim, the independent telecoms analyst claims that multinationals (MNCs) are struggling to manage the ever growing cost and complexity of business mobility and many have little idea how much they are spending globally.

However, Ovum has found that while most are quick to lay the blame on the mobile operators, they could do much more themselves to bring the situation under control.

Pauline Trotter, Ovum analyst and author of the report, said: “The major mobile service providers have invested in improvements over the past two years to support MNCs in tackling the issue of international mobility. In particular, they have improved areas such as expense management, device management and help desk support.”

However, our research shows that MNCs continue to be unimpressed by their offerings. “We think this judgment is harsh as, while managed mobility services are still immature, MNCs need to take responsibility for some of the problems themselves,” adds Trotter based in London.

“While on the whole they feel that the service provided in individual countries is satisfactory, on a global scale, they do not feel providers are meeting their needs. They want to see a global managed services approach for mobile similar to those they have already for fixed services.

This situation is even more critical in Asia-Pacific where MNC users are highly mobile, but the enterprise mobile service offers from service providers are underwhelming. Most solutions are restricted to remote access services, on-premise mobility support for users travelling between MNC sites and general roaming offers.

There is a lack of managed mobility offerings on a pan-Asia Pacific scale, and where support is provided it is only available for customers with a very high number of mobile users.

But user demands for global managed mobility may be unrealistic, given the structure of the mobile industry, as managed mobility providers can only provide global (or even pan-regional) offers through strong partnerships and these will take time to build.

Many multinationals have a continued fragmented approach to procurement, however, and this is a major barrier to a more efficient approach. Until they take a more holistic approach then their service providers will only ever be able to provide a partial solution, no matter how much they invest in improvements to their services.”

The report makes several recommendations for service providers to help them build their relationships with MNCs, including continuing to help multinationals with cost management and providing more support in mobile device management.