FEATURE: BUSINESS MOBILITY
Catering to an
evolving workforce
Today, workforces are distributed and digital,
and mobilising a workforce is critical not only
for employee satisfaction and productivity,
but also for an organisation’s bottom line.
Mobility solutions empower employees to
work ‘smarter’ while improving productivity
by providing the required information
on the go. Organisations everywhere
are revamping business models to equip
employees with solutions that support a
variety of applications including; dispatching,
customer relationship management, asset
management, mobile point of sale (POS),
medication administration and warehouse
management – to name just a few.
The benefits associated with these
investments are equally diverse as it can
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
is being embraced by employees and
customers alike, helping to provide people
with more personalised and efficient services
while enabling employees to realise new
levels of productivity.
The mobility
management challenge
Regardless of size, any organisation with
a mobile workforce must have mobility
management software in place. Smart and
rugged devices are now critical to business and
must be managed and supported efficiently.
For the most part, devices and apps work
smoothly, but sometimes things go wrong.
Even one dropped connection or poorly
performing application per shift can translate
into an annual cost of almost £16,000 in
support and productivity loss per mobile
worker. The consequence of each failure
mobility is deployed, it is often the
company’s network connectivity issues
that are the leading cause of failures. This
includes anything from basic cellular and
Wi-Fi connectivity glitches to secure VPN
problems. Almost as troublesome are
software errors, specifically application
issues, operating system problems and
security/access control complications.
It should come as no surprise that the
biggest concern for ongoing business
mobility initiatives is data and file security.
With new data privacy regulations such
as GDPR in play, companies are more
concerned than ever about keeping sensitive
data secure and private.
As companies broaden and deepen their
mobility deployments, real-time security
and management of mobile devices, apps
and their connectivity are more critical
than ever.
Embracing business mobility
WITH ALMOST 80% OF
ORGANISATIONS BELIEVING THAT
THEIR EMPLOYEES CANNOT DO THEIR
JOBS EFFECTIVELY WITHOUT MOBILE
TECHNOLOGY, IT IS IMPERATIVE
THAT ORGANISATIONS UNDERSTAND
BUSINESS MOBILITY IS ABOUT MUCH
MORE THAN JUST THE DEVICE.
increase workforce performance efficiencies,
enabling flexibility, improving customer
engagement, streamlining operations and
improving decision making so organisations
can maximise their competitive advantage.
It also affords greater creativity, redefines
operations and ultimately aids business
growth. But the shift to business mobility
is not just about cutting costs or jump-
starting revenues, it’s also about serving and
delighting customers and building future
businesses for the digital era. incident can result in up to 100 minutes in lost
productivity or 23% of a daily shift.
Mobility is no longer just a new business
trend – it’s a means of working which While securing and managing a multitude
of devices can be difficult, once business
44
INTELLIGENTCIO
Mobile technology has become
increasingly paramount to the success of
a business and while improving workforce
productivity remains the leading business-
critical mobility investment driver,
organisations are similarly leveraging these
investments to drive revenues, improve
real-time decision making and introduce
competitive differentiation.
There is no doubt that the explosive growth
of smartphones and tablets has made
business mobility more complicated. With a
huge range of makes and models of mobile,
tablets and special-purpose devices that
often run on different operating systems,
organisations that aren’t leveraging an
integrated mobile approach could see
significant losses in revenue.
Leigh Moody, Managing Director UK at SOTI
www.intelligentcio.com