South African organisations need to focus on developing mobility strategies that are more attuned to their business goals.

This is according to survey commissioned by CA Technologies that interviewed 50 senior South African IT decision-makers during December 2013.

“The survey shows clearly that South African organisations are very much awake to the potential of mobility, with 54% saying they already have a strategy in place and 30% stating they plan to have a single, company-wide mobility strategy in place within the year,” says Andrea Lodolo, CTO of CA Southern Africa.

“Money is definitely being spent on mobility, but what’s concerning is the way it’s being done.”

Lodolo believes that the issue is that mobility projects are being implemented tactically without a coherent enterprise mobility strategy.

“We need to take a more strategic approach to mobility as a whole,” he continues. “IT needs to take the lead as mobility literally places productivity in the hands of the employee. If we don’t adopt a top down approach we risk missing the potential synergies and ultimately diminishing the role of the CIO.”

According to the survey, more than three-quarters of organisations are already spending more than 10% of their IT budgets on mobility projects.

Gareth James, CA Southern Africa, solution strategist, cloud and mobility, says this amount is set to rise over the next three years.

“It is interesting to note that 88% of respondents surveyed stated that over a tenth of their spending on mobility projects comes from outside of the IT department,” says James.

James notes that the need for rapid and continuous application development – in order to keep pace with customer demand – is an added challenge.

“Overseeing the application programming interface (API) will be vital to the attainment of a consistent and seamless customer experience across all applications, as well as data security,” James says.

“Mobility is increasingly a vital business enabler so organisations need to ensure that they have a consistent and effective strategy in place,” James says.