In the beginning

In the beginning, our foundation at MOBI was simple: focus on the user. Armed with a couple world-class developers, our best guess at market research, and a vision to transform the way companies manage connected devices, we moved fast.

Looking back, it’s easy to see how this attitude towards the user ignited innovation as part of our culture. Innovation became the key by-product of focusing on the user—never forced, measured, or incentivized, it was just something we did to improve the customer experience.

Breaking away from the pack

MOBI is often compared to legacy Telecom Expense Management (TEM) providers within the Managed Mobility Services (MMS) category. But, we are not a TEM solution. We set ourselves apart with our software-first enterprise mobility solutions. Most MMS vendors exist as an extension of a legacy TEM solution, and their solutions are led by services; their software is ancillary. MOBI is the opposite—our software is what enables our services to deliver more value to our customers.

MOBI’s platform was built solely to help customers manage their mobile programs. Where legacy TEM providers focus primarily on expense management, our best-in-class analytics tools drive intelligent customer decision-making in device, workflow, expense, and program management. From device lifecycle management to Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution integration, our robust and scalable architecture offers us the ability to expand with customers’ connectivity needs.

A culture of innovation

MOBI’s been fortunate to grow nearly 50% year-over-year for the past three years. What factors are critical to our extraordinary growth? Two external elements, market maturation and device consumerization have pushed companies to find experts in mobility.

Internally, our passion for innovation is the most important ingredient in our continued product evolution, market growth, and industry leadership. We have an extraordinary team, extended family and an attitude for exploring what’s next.  Historically, this is where innovation stalls—when companies look exclusively at internal resources for innovative ideas.

At MOBI, we have been strategic in how we fuel our innovation, looking toward critical groups of people and analyzing business processes to find inspiration:

  • Employees: Every team member at MOBI is looked upon to drive innovation. Whether it’s a UI/UX change, a presentation tweak, or an afterhours engineering project, MOBIans expect and are relied on to contribute new ideas and challenge the status quo. This ideology is how brilliant new concepts are born.
  • Customers: Our most valuable partners are our customers, and we’re in this together. We utilize our Customer Advisory Board to discuss emerging trends in mobility management, provide candid feedback, and offer guidance on future product features and updates.
  • Channel and EMM solution partners: In addition to our employees and customers, we rely heavily on our channel partners and Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution providers to help identify potential platform enhancements and integrations. Collaborating with our partners is critical to finding nuggets of innovation to populate our roadmap and help drive our vision forward.
  • Assessing the customer journey: One of the most critical places to uncover potential for innovation is in the customer journey. Assessing where customers are realizing value in the product and where there are opportunities for improvement is a crucial step.

Be so good they can’t ignore you

As MOBI strives to be at the forefront of enterprise mobility solutions, we realize that we cannot do it alone. Driving a culture built on innovation takes just the right mix of employees, customers, and partners, as well as the willingness to continuously reinvent ourselves. The only way we can be successful is by listening to and empowering those around us. And so far, it’s working. With a customer retention rate of 97%, our customers clearly recognize the value that our innovation brings.

What is your organization doing to drive innovation? If you’re having a hard time building a culture of innovation, or if you simply don’t know where to begin, hit reset and focus on the user.

This contributed piece by Scott Kraege was originally published on the MOBI blog.