Key Tech Adoption Indices

Technology and Operational Savvy Indicators

In figure 3, there are two axes that we look at to determine mobile maturity on an organizational level:

Operational Savvy – how do they make decisions, their business agility and role involvements of the organization.

Technology Savvy – which includes the capabilities and skills of the organization in deploying and optimizing technology and their forward-projecting strategies.

What we found in the research is there are four underlying indicators of technology and operational savvy:

Current mobile investment optimization strategies

Decision making priorities

Operational agility

Preparedness for future innovation.

Figure 3: Mobile Tech Adoption Matrix

Current Mobile Investment Optimization StrategiesThe acid test for differentiating today between Innovators, Early Adopters and the other segments really plays out in where they focus their efforts and capabilities to deploy, optimize and maximize return.1. Actively used tech services – Innovators and Early Adopters focus on getting the framework for the support of their technology in place – with Managed Mobility Services (MMS) providers being a priority. (Figure 4 represents the percentage of each class)

Figure 4: Actively Used Tech Services

2. Technology optimization – Innovators are best at squeezing out the most from the technologies they deploy - by almost 50% more than any other segment. While the technologies themselves matter, they gain a clear advantage by getting the most return on investment from their mobile tech.

Average Optimization of Current Technologies

3. Technology implementation success factors – Innovators and Early Adopters look to “The How” in terms of integrating new technology efficiently and effectively, whereas the Majorities look at “The Why” in terms of justification of decision making.These insights collectively reveal that while Innovators look to build the supporting frameworks for technology adoption, the other classes are focused upon the cost/financial implication and justification of deploying technology. This hesitancy involves more groups in the decision-making process, thereby delaying and diluting the efficacy of the solution. Their focus is centered upon the technology cost rather than overall impact on business growth.

Technology Implementation Success Factors

Consider How:

Innovators are the only ones to prioritize Technology Maturity (strong ecosystem of partners) in their decision making.
Only Innovators and Early Adopters indicated that the ability of IT teams to support the deployment was important (58.4% and 46.8%).
Innovators also look at deployments differently – rating very highly the importance of both mobile logistics services and a comprehensive pilot.

Consider Why:

Cost of the technology was NOT important to Innovators – but it is for Early Adopters and Early Majority.
Executive sponsorship was important for Early Majority
Collaboration with IT and business decision makers and the inclusion of end users in the decision making are factors exclusive to the Late Majority.

Decision Making PrioritiesDedicated strategic roles are important. As we previously mentioned, Innovators have, by far, the greatest presence of dedicated IT strategy roles involved in planning IT initiatives compared to other segments. The breakdown of their decision-making rationale concerns the following:

Technology selection - All groups rate Business Impact and Ease of Adoption as significant. Innovators, however, are the only segment to indicate that Technology Maturity is important – and it’s actually their most important criterion. It’s fascinating to note that these organizations are first to adopt, yet they still value maturity. Why? Because maturity doesn’t mean the tech’s lifespan for this segment – it means it’s ‘readiness’ to be deployed, is it supported, well documented and readily available? And, because Innovators partner extensively – they are well equipped to assess the ‘maturity’ of the technology. Innovators follow technology closely, work with providers to understand it definitively, and position their organizational capabilities to pounce exactly when the technology is stable. This is the essence of their competitive advantage.

As expected, Early Majority and Late Majority rate total cost as the most important feature (54.2% and 64.3%, respectively). This datum again points to the approach of prioritizing the technology – and the price of the technology – more so than potential beneficial business impact.

Innovators really stand out alone in the category of Extremely Important Tech Partner Criteria, and it may be their organizational knowledge and willingness to create and sustain partnerships that drives this behavior.

Figure 5: Top 3 Tech Partner Evaluation Criteria by Tech Adoption Segment

In addition to Innovators being far more partner-oriented, there are two interesting differences in Innovators approach to partnering that stand out:

Innovators rank experience in their specific industry or vertical market – understanding their particular customer – as their most important criterion at 71.3% while the only other segments to mention that were almost 50% lower in importance.

Innovators don’t rank cost of the MMS provider’s solution as important at all – they’re focused on the features and benefits. All other segments rated cost the first or second-most important criteria.

Operational AgilityHow well-equipped are businesses to adapt to shifts and change? We asked respondents how well their organizations adapted to change, and they indicated their operational agility in Figure 6.

Figure 6: How Well Equipped are Businesses to Adapt to Shifts and Changes

Barriers to Change – Innovators and Early Adopters indicated that organizational capabilities (Internal IT team, IT Service partners) were the biggest barriers to tech adoption. Early and Late Majority classes focused on intrinsic attributes around organizational readiness & decision-making (e.g. lack of support, lack culture of innovation, organizational decision making).Disruption Achievement Strategies – Our most notable findings here are that Innovators are the only class looking to partner with other Innovators or start-ups to achieve disruption. Early Adopters favor acquiring disruptive companies, if possible. Most interestingly, the Majority look to a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tact for achieving disruption, favoring a combination of leveraging data analytics and fostering a culture of innovation.