Every company is digital and every employee is a mobile worker.
Driving this trend is enterprise mobility one of the most disrupting changes facing business. While many interpretations exist, enterprise mobility refers not only to mobile workers and mobile devices, but also to the transfer of corporate data via messaging, conferencing, files and storage. Workers now are able to transact business with anyone, anytime, anywhere, anyplace with any device.
Enterprise mobility promotes sharing of knowledge across the company. The result–improved customer relations, faster decisions and enhanced innovation.
“Mobile collaboration means working together wherever you are. It doesn’t matter where your location is,” says Ted Schadler, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. “You’re able to get the communication and the resources you need to work together.”
Among the trends driving mobile collaboration is the fact that consumers are, by nature, social and collaborative. As they become accustomed to using those technologies in their personal lives, they want to use the business equivalents on their mobile devices.
“Increasingly, people are wanting to use their mobile devices—smartphones, touch phones, tablets—to do all the same things they can do on their computers” says Schadler”
Business news is hyping enterprise mobility:
- Be like Batman: why a super-mobile workforce is imperative
- Collaboration is everywhere. at our water coolers, in our meetings, across distant locations.
- Enterprise mobile now moves at Uber pace
- A Shifting Paradigm in Business Communications
In this case, the hype appears justified. Markets and Markets expects the telecom IT services market to grow by 70 billion US$ by 2019.
Enterprise mobility drivers include:
- information is central to every organization’s workflow
- the proliferation of mobile devices and apps due to rapid advances in mobile technology
- employees increasingly use “bring your own devices” (BYOD) and apps to use at work
- companies need to manage how employees are using their devices and apps in the workplace
- 865 million to 1.3 billion information workers are forecasted by 2016 according to Forester Research and IDC
Another significant driver are the returns from implementing Enterprise mobility. According to a a study by Enterprise Mobility Exchange the results are compelling:
- 33.9% – competitive advantages
- 33.9% – efficiencies on task in the enterprise
- 30.4% – efficiencies on task for field services
- 28.6% – customer loyalty and retention
- 23.2% – improved sales performance
- 14.3% – cost reductions across lines of business
- 14.3% – cost reductions across with overheads
- 14.3% – accurate, faster and higher quality field data capture
While enterprise mobility offers significant returns and advantages there are risks and this is the nexus with innovation governance. In an earlier post, I reviewed overall Innovation Governance Risks.
The list also applies to enterprise mobility and appended are more specific risks:
- workers use third party apps that may contain malware
- lack of effective passcode/pin compliance
- lost devices
- toll fraud
- legacy devices used
- use of unsecured wifi networks
Managing risks is an essential issue for C-Levels and is the primary cause of delay in enterprise mobility adoption. A closer look at the innovation governance issues linked to enterprise mobility will be the subject of forthcoming posts.
Read more on this topic.
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
