-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise. Follow Dan on Twitter.
"Imagine a place where it's always safe and warm...Come in, she said: I'll give you shelter from the storm."
-Bob Dylan, 1974
Huge surge in customers turning on mobile reports in the past six months. It's nice to see interest in a feature I've always felt is underused and underappreciated. The recent activity got me thinking: what has changed? How come the same customers with the same business environments and devices suddenly changed how they're using Aeroprise in a pretty fundamental way?
No scientific proof but a decent amount of anecdotal evidence to back up this hypothesis...
Reports (we call them Executive Summaries) aggregate information about whatever matters to you into timely, actionable word bites. They're ideal for users who receive a lot of requests, have too little time to process them, and are driven by service targets. Our profile user for Exec Summaries is middle-aged, stashes his phone after hours (yeah, some people still do that), has 15 or more direct reports, and a bachelors degree or higher in some technical field. It goes without saying: in the past year that user's world has been turned upside down and shaken like a martini in a centrifuge.
In fact, it has changed faster than his ability to adapt. What do we do when new external pressures force internal changes beyond the safe harbor of current business habit? Since the Industrial Revolution, we've turned to technology. By definition, it helps us achieve more output per unit of input and it's needed more now than ever. It's also the reason smartphones are to modern business what ugly ties are to Wall Street.
So back to my point: just what has changed in the world of IT that makes mobile reporting so necessary all of a sudden? Here are four things:
1. In a tough economy, all decisions are more time-critical and bad ones have more impact. We're all working with skeleton crews under the watchful eye of axe-wielding CFOs. So while the volume of decisions to be made has only increased, they're more scrutinized than ever.
2. We're working with old software and equipment. One of the first casualties of the recession was the traditional upgrade cycle. So not only are we under more pressure to perform but we're working with tragically outdated tools.
3. The culture of mobility has infiltrated IT. Business users get instant updates about everything from flights to auctions to news - and expect the same level of responsiveness when they have IT issues. That, coupled with ever-evolving technologies IT must support - SaaS applications, mobile devices, and Windows 7 to name a few - mean IT is in a challenging state of flux.
4. IT is more strategic to the business than ever because the new global economy runs on technology. The line that once separated the CIO from the CTO is gone. These days, internal tools spawn external projects that often morph and spawn new internal tools. Case in point: we have a Fortune 50 customer in the oil industry that built a mobile application for monitoring the productivity of oil derricks based on their internal Aeroprise BMC Remedy helpdesk application.
So what does all this mean? I don't know - but it does explain the popularity of mobile reporting, a tool that helps make better decisions faster. Reminds me of the parched guy in the desert panting toward the mirage of a lake with a bottle of water in hand. That bottle won't quench his thirst forever but it will clear his head long enough to find a map. I guess what I'm saying is if you're using Aeroprise and not using reports, try it - sure beats dying of thirst.
Contact us if you need help configuring reports or just a pep talk to get you started. Oh, and if you're using them and have a success story to share, check out our customer reference program.
The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.
