Reviewed and updated in October 2026.
Digital transformation means using digital technology to create new business practices, or change existing ones, as business and market requirements shift. Without goals it turns into a collection of unrelated projects. Two companies that looked equally well run before 2020 show why goal-setting matters for mobile operations.
The Acme Corporation (name changed) is an IT company with employees around the globe. They work mainly in the office but can also work remotely. All business processes are mobilized, and employees have a laptop, smartphone and tablet for work. A few years earlier, most of the data infrastructure moved from on premises to the cloud to reduce costs, simplify maintenance and support, improve performance and make services accessible worldwide.
The ABC Company (name changed) is a customer care subsidiary of a large electrical company. Its work processes are digitized, but everyone works in the office from Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, on desktop computers, with landline phones for internal calls.
Both companies were successful, and nothing suggested that either had skipped its homework. Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, and their level of mobile preparedness decided how they coped.
Acme sent everyone home. Employees already worked with mobile devices, so day one was business as usual.
For ABC it was a different story. Closing the office to the public was the easy decision. Getting employees back online from home was the hard part. Most of them had to pick up their desktop computers, take them home and find room for them before they could work again. There was no communication system beyond the office landlines, so teams improvised with WhatsApp for chat, calls and video calls. Work conversations and documents ended up in a consumer app that the company neither managed nor could audit. Some internal systems were neither virtualized nor reachable from the internet, so the IT service provider had to open remote connections in a hurry, to computers that no UEM managed. Security suffered, and the quick fix came at an unplanned cost.
The deciding factor was their stage of digitalization. Acme's was more than adequate for remote work. ABC relied on resources that only existed inside the office, and it had never planned or set goals for its digital transformation. With those plans in place, the move to remote work would have been far less painful.
Setting goals is the first step; ranking them is the second. Define primary, secondary and tertiary goals so that the most important parts of the transformation are done first. Keep them tied to high-level business goals such as increasing revenue, investing in innovation or reducing error rates. That keeps them achievable and gives you something to measure.
Every goal also needs someone responsible for the overall function. This ties back to step four of the series, defining ownership, and to owners staying in touch with their stakeholders.
If the goal is set early, the company invests in technology and encourages employees to use it, bumps in the road are handled calmly and with confidence. Clear year-end goals for mobile operations help save money, operating costs and time as the digital workplace takes shape. Once the goals are set, check whether your vendors still serve them. That is the next step: assess your mobility vendor performance in relation to your goals.
Want to turn your digital workplace plans into measurable goals? Our team supports endpoint management from strategy to daily operations, and our trainings prepare administrators for the platforms you run. Contact us with any questions.