What CIOs Can Learn From SMBs About Creating Value

 Featured article By Ann Monroe, vice president, worldwide marketing, FileMaker, Inc. – an Apple subsidiary

Organizations are harnessing mobile devices to change the way they work. To explore this issue, Deloitte recently released its 2016-2017 Global CIO Survey. The firm surveyed or interviewed 1,217 global CIOs, a process that helped shed light on a CIO’s ability to create value for the business. The survey noted that this digital shift requires large transformations in back-end technologies, legacy IT systems, IT culture, skills and capabilities – and that CIOs are better positioned than any other occupant of the C-suite to drive digital across the entire organization.

CIO legacies will likely be shaped by how well they respond to and anticipate the needs of the business. However, they face an uphill battle, as more than a quarter (28 percent) ranked their IT organizations as below average in digital skill sets. And while 78 percent of CIOs said that strategic alignment of IT activities with business strategy was critical to their success, only five percent said it was a leading-class capability.

Let’s take a look at how SMB owners create value for their businesses with technology. SMB owners have their boots on the ground every day, so they regularly encounter the need to align people, process and technology. SMB owners often start with a simple challenge and, over time, they change their business processes to create greater efficiency, productivity and customer experiences. This requires flexible technology tools to get the best outcomes.

A custom app platform is one of those tools. A low-code or no-code solution gives problem solvers in a small business or in a department within an enterprise the opportunity to be creative – in short, to invent their own future. These are the very individuals best suited to innovate and lead digital transformation. SMB owners use custom app platforms to deliver a better experience for their customers and employees every day. CIOS who foster innovation and digital transformation are turning to these same friendly and flexible platforms.

SMB owners create value for their businesses by creating custom apps that apply their unique knowledge and experience to recurring problems or inefficiencies. Below are examples of businesses that have done just that.

Enabling Green Growth

The Jones Companies, a national market leader in recycling based in Mississippi, contracts with convenience stores, retail stores and grocery store chains to pick up and recycle thousands of pounds of unwanted cardboard every week. The company digitally transformed route scheduling and customer lists with an iPad-based mobile custom app that utterly revolutionized their business. The visually appealing app replaced paper forms and integrated with the company’s existing accounting software. Meanwhile, as drivers on their routes enter information into the iPad app, dashboards at the office track the location and cargo of each truck. The integration between the office and the field for scheduling, and being able to have statistical data in real time, has enabled the company to grow.

Flexibility and Mobility

Laboratoires Activa is focused on providing a new generation of products with 100 percent natural active ingredients, made from plants, minerals and sequenced amino acids, in order to restore a day-to-day balance and regulate functional disorders. The company’s 15 salespeople use MobiPharma Pro, an app specifically designed to meet Laboratoires Activa’s needs, on their iPad devices during their day-to-day sales trips to pharmacies, giving them constant access to client data (contact information, locations, schedules), which they can edit. They can also access visit histories and enter and check orders.

Combining the computer-based back-office module with a mobile module accessible from iPad devices gives Laboratoires Activa flexibility and mobility. The app also has a variety of reporting and database tools that make analyzing and managing sales activities easy, while also saving time thanks to an intuitive, user-friendly interface. After more than a year, the Laboratoires Activa sales teams have been managing all of their work in the field from their iPad devices. They’ve seen improved efficiency and ease of communication; orders can be taken more quickly and deliveries are faster and more reliable.

Inventing the Future

By using a custom app platform to fuel business transformation and innovation, SMB owners and CIOs can overcome inefficient processes and put their teams on a path to mobile transformation. A path to invention that leads to economic growth. A path that gives people the chance to create breakthrough solutions to the problems they see every day.

About the author

Ann Monroe is vice president, worldwide marketing for FileMaker, Inc., an Apple subsidiary, and is responsible for marketing the company’s software for creating custom apps for iPad devices, iPhone, Windows, Mac and the web. She holds an MBA degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Loyola Marymount University.