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My high school math teacher, Mrs. Cartledge, would ask the class questions about the practical application of geometry.  One of my favorites was, “How many legs should a bar stool have and why?”

It took us a while to come up with the answer. Of course we all know that any three points define a plane, so a three legged stool will never wobble. That has me thinking about the “Three Legged Stool of Mobility.” The legs of the stool are made up the CIO, CFO, and the end user. That’s fine and stable – as long as all three legs are the same length! Each leg has their own agenda and rarely do they align. How do you make sure your stool is both stable and level in 2016?

In other words, how do we balance the demands of the CFO’s need for cost containment; the CIO’s security, reliability and productivity requirements; and consumer choice and other aspects of the user experience? It begins with a cross-functional “mobile taskforce” charged with understanding the competing business drivers and making sure that employee productivity can survive and thrive through the consumerization of enterprise mobility – whether you live in a corporate liable or BYOD world.

The mobile taskforce will balance the needs of CIO, CFO, and end user to leverage mobility for top line gains; to establish an accurate inventory of all mobile assets and ensure full availability of mission-critical applications and the apps that will set you apart from the competition. And to know when it becomes cost-effective to expand your mobile investment. For example:

• To determine when to deploy more iPads and tablets to speed up retail point of sale bottlenecks and save the sale on the floor with real-time warehouse shopping
• To deploy that truck of the future with fully integrated scheduling, routing, inventory and billing/payment processing

A mobile taskforce is key to driving decisions that incorporate the business goals, knowing tradeoffs, and concessions will be required to balance your Three Legged Stool of Mobility.