Brazil takes its Place as a Leader in Mobility as Enterprises continue their Digital Transformation [INSIGHT & REPORT]

Brazilian businesses have a higher level of maturity than their emerging market peers when it comes to mobility strategies and funding plans, as 93 percent of CIOs in Brazil agree or strongly agree that mobility will provide significant new sources of revenue, according to Accenture.
 
The Accenture 2013 CIO Mobility Survey found that 87 percent of CIO respondents in Brazil ranked mobility as a very high or a high priority, significantly more than the global average of 76 percent. To address this priority, 37 percent indicated that they have widely developed mobility strategies in place, compared to a global average of just 23 percent. Brazilian CIOs are dedicating significant efforts to making their mobility plans a reality, and as a result, nearly a quarter of those who took part in this survey declared that more than 50 percent of their discretionary IT budget for 2013 would be allocated to mobility – more than double the global average.
 
Accenture conducted the global survey of CIOs and other C-suite IT professionals to understand if companies are embracing the importance of mobility, and to identify the top mobility priorities of IT professionals and the perceived obstacles to achieving them.
 
The motivation to learn from more mature markets in the adoption of mobility is clear, and is aided by the fact that Brazil has more greenfield opportunities and fewer legacy systems to contend with than the global average, which might explain why only 13 percent of Brazilian CIOs agreed with the 31 percent of global CIOs citing interoperability with current systems as a barrier to mobile implementation.
 
“Brazil has matured extremely quickly, with 20 percent more CIOs having a centralized company-wide strategy for mobility than in the same survey last year,” said Jin Lee, Senior Managing Director, Accenture Mobility. “There is no doubt that Brazil is ahead of its peers in addressing organizational and budgetary issues around mobility, but there is still a long path ahead to really demonstrate the business benefits of mobility through implementation and take advantage of the applications that will drive productivity improvements for organisations in this market.”
 
While Brazilian CIOs are just slightly ahead of the global average in allowing mobile access to email for employees (by one point at 73 percent), respondents came in well behind the global averages for accommodating access to key business applications such as ERP (10 points fewer than the global average of 43 percent), supply chain management (23 percent compared to 31 percent), and CRM, which only 23 percent of Brazilian CIOs allow access to, compared to a global average of 53 percent. This is despite the fact that 37 percent of Brazilian CIOs acknowledged a goal of driving revenue through customer engagement, and 40 percent said they want to improve field service and customer service. In addition, a third of Brazilian respondents stated the aim of accelerating the sales cycle through improved access to back-end systems, which demonstrates that there is a significant disconnect between business objectives and the adoption of relevant technology.
 
This challenge was also reflected in the barriers to mobile implementation that Brazilian CIOs said they face, as nearly a quarter of all respondents (23 percent) – double the global average – said they didn’t know how to get started, or what to do next.
 
“Enthusiasm for mobility in Brazil is high, and the pace at which the market is maturing is impressive, but we can see from these findings that some organisations would benefit from pausing to identify where they could get the most benefit from mobile deployment,” said Renato Improta, managing director, Accenture Mobility Brazil. “Ensuring that mobility strategies are implemented in alignment with business objectives to include, for example, mobile access to ERP or CRM systems, will allow CIOs to gain competitive advantage and demonstrate the real benefits of a comprehensive strategy. Brazil has an intensely exciting few years ahead of it on the global stage, and the chance to make changes to infrastructure that will hasten the transformation to digital enterprises across the country. It is important that CIOs understand what mobility can enable in their business so they can take full advantage of opportunities for revenue generation and productivity gains.”
 
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