Here’s Why Enterprises Should Deploy Mobility in 2016

Mobility, as a technology, has become an integral part of our lives which now drives interactions with our business systems. Enterprises today recognize the value of enabling their workforce and employees to work anytime and anywhere through its usage.

The two main drivers of mobilizing the workforce are the increased number of scattered employees and the desire for greater efficiency. Mobilizing the workforce has become an inevitable requirement for most enterprises today, and with the expanded workforce outside office, employees prefer not to be restricted to desktop-based applications, as they need to collaborate and work as a team.

By 2017, 100% of the applications used by LoB in customer-facing roles and 75% of apps used by LoB in internal-facing roles will be built for mobile-first.

The key benefit of mobilization is the improvement in productivity brought on by mobile apps, as they provide real time information, allow last minute changes, and reduce communication time. Stressing on the rapid proliferation of mobility and its impact on businesses, Paul Daugherty, CTO, Accenture, says, “According to some recent reports, out of the total world population of 7 billion, there are already 5 billion mobile subscriptions, which means approximately two-thirds of the globe is mobile-enabled. In terms of India, these statistics convert to almost 900 million mobile users. India is definitely a huge potential market to be tapped into, and organizations must leverage this technology for their own benefit.”

Also, the need to enable this technology is causing friction among enterprises, irrespective of their verticals. Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, President & CTO, Reliance, defined the two dimensions of mobility. “Mobility has two important facets—one is customer-facing and the other is employee-facing. In the first, we are required to push content to customers’ devices, providing them with self-service capability, and introducing new business solutions. In the latter, we create new ways which let employees work anywhere, anytime. Desktop computers are slowly starting to lose their significance in the current scenario.”

It is not surprising that organizations are incorporating mobile technologies into their businesses workflows to make the most of their IT infrastructure. And the transformative effect of mobility on different enterprise functions has been prevalent.

Expanding on the main point, A. Koteshwara Rao, ED-IT, Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation says, “To monitor mobility and punctuality of our field employees, we have installed special tracking systems in approximately 1,300 vehicles in Hyderabad. We then send the same information to our customers for their ease. We have expanded our operations in other major cities as well. Our aim is to monitor vehicles which provide long-distance services, night services, and inter-state services.”

Enterprise mobility helps in expanding business processes beyond the brick-and-mortar boundaries of workplace by providing an increasing mobile workforce with access to organizations’ actionable information anytime, and from anywhere. Cementing business engagement, improving customer satisfaction, easing business processes, and enhancing transparency are some of the goals of mobility.

Given the fluidity of enterprise mobility, as well as the several other benefits, IT decision makers believe that opening up digital channels through enterprise mobility should be a priority for organizations, with a significant proportion of employees not sitting inside offices.

Acting right now not only means developing a competitive advantage, but also preparing for the future where every employee, whether at a desk or not, will be digitally enabled.