Diageo, the world’s foremost premium drinks company — famed for brands such as Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Jose Cuervo and Guinness — is responding to the explosive growth in mobile technology with applications and services that allow its employees to be more productive, and its customers to relate more closely to its brands. CIO Brian Franz sees great opportunities for firms that figure out compelling ways to capitalize on the dynamics that mobile devices introduce. The £13 billion ($20bn) group is already generating a stream of mobile apps that spans sales, marketing and promotions, but also reaches right down to its supply chain.

What factors are informing Diageo’s thinking on mobile apps and devices — for both internal users and consumers?

In the past few years we’ve seen rapid changes in consumer behavior, driven by technology. Within Diageo, we are working to better understand our employees’ use of IT, recognizing that as consumers they are already accessing advanced technologies — netbooks, laptops, smartphones, digital cameras, MP3 players, iPads, eBook readers and so on — and are seeking those same standards in the workplace.

This consumerization of IT has led us to focus on a more user-driven approach, which is not “one size fits all.” With mobile devices, for example, we already take a technology-agnostic approach, working across multiple devices, including BlackBerrys, iPhones, iPads, Android and Windows Mobile.

From a workforce standpoint, it is critical that we provide our employees with the flexibility they need to sell and market our products, and to perform core tasks through secure mobile devices. Providing employees with access to information when they want and need it is vital if we want to compete in the marketplace, and data integrity and confidentiality must come hand-in-hand with that availability.

For example, we are currently piloting the iPad to research how we can use this technology to increase workforce flexibility and productivity, and to understand which roles — perhaps those who work with rich digital media or directly with customers and third parties — might benefit most. We are creating use cases and policies that clearly identify business benefits, with the clear goal of making our people better at their jobs.

How are patterns of mobile usage changing within Diageo?

Over 20% of our workforce currently use mobile technology, [mostly] BlackBerrys within our executive teams, sales and marketing. But 70% of our employee population use laptops, and we are looking to enhance the relationship that our employees have with mobile technology by extending our services through to their personal mobiles and other devices — enabling them to access [key applications] more easily and more flexibly. Right now, we are looking to introduce core productivity applications, including SAP applications across multiple mobile devices.

In addition, we have [already] implemented handhelds to enable our salesforce in some of our emerging markets, including Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and South Africa, to automate some front-end sales processes. And we’re looking into mobile CRM tools for our field salesforces in the near future.

How do you see mobile apps and services evolving as a consumer channel?

From a consumer standpoint, we know that mobile devices are reaching more consumers than ever, and they are interacting on mobile more than ever before. We can use mobile technology to get closer to our consumer — to develop campaigns and create a seamless consumer experience.

We already use smartphone GPS capabilities to find pubs and at Diageo-sponsored events; we have cocktail apps for iPhones, downloadable discount coupons, on-premise promotions, and a mobile version of thebar.com where consumers can access information about Diageo brands and recipes — all designed to drive interaction into purchase.

We’ve recently introduced a new digital marketing platform to support our mobile strategy. This channel-agnostic platform gives our global brand teams the flexibility to engage with the digital agencies of their choice to reach consumers in new ways.

We also see a rapid rise in mobile technology use in our emerging markets — across Asia Pac, Latin America and Africa — where mobile is becoming the dominant channel, and is cheap and reliable. For example, there are over 710 million mobile Internet users in China, with over 60% of Internet users using their mobile to surf the Net.

In Africa, where the mobile phone is the main device for Internet access, we’ve run SMS messaging-based promotions on mobile phones. Through these dynamic touchpoints, we are able to learn quickly about our consumers and their habits to drive our campaigns.

When it comes to mobile app development and deployment, how do you manage the boundary between IT and marketing?

We maintain a roster of partner agencies who have been approved to develop mobile applications for our brands. Adherence to best-practice application development and testing is required to remain on this roster. Our procurement, information systems and marketing teams collaborate to make this model work.

But, above all, Diageo is a marketing-driven company. Our business can leverage mobile to drive operational growth and to market and sell our products in a secure way. Through mobile and digital interactions, we have the ability to reach our consumers better and to learn more about them, creating a consumer-centric approach that informs our campaigns and supports our responsible-drinking agenda.