Devices For The Always-On-Workforce

Today’s mobile email, document shuffling, and occasional presentation are small potatoes compared to what’s coming. Off-the-shelf productivity apps? Yesterday’s news. Businesses mobilizing their core enterprise systems will give workforces anytime, anywhere access to company data, systems, and infrastructure. It’s not unreasonable to think that ultimately, anything that can be done on a company-networked computer will be able to be done on a smartphone or tablet. (And a significant number of those devices will be personally owned by the workers.) - 

Marketing managers will access corporate analytics on their phone while they’re in a meeting. Plant supervisors will order parts for their assembly line from an iPad. Field service reps will check the warehouse for repair parts while they’re at a customer site. And of course, the emails will continue to flow back and forth while workers are at the opera, with their kids at the playground, or on the road. 

Some companies are well on their way towards such uber-connectedness. And many more are taking their first steps in that direction.

Related Links
1. The March Towards Mobilization
2. Mobile Web Optimization
3. Mobile User Experience Trends

Get Moving Toward Enterprise Mobility

The smartphone and tablet revolution has passed the tipping point in the enterprise, driven from every side. Businesses want increased productivity, efficiency, and agility.

Employees want flexibility to work anywhere using their preferred mobile device. And the major software providers and their partner ecosystems are scrambling to build the conduits and apps to connect enterprises with their workers, wherever those workers may be.

A device adoption strategy, security policy, app development process, and automated testing programs are the obvious overall steps toward enterprise mobility. Not so obvious are the myriad infrastructure and management requirements behind the scenes, such as readying the back-end for mobile, building the data conduits, and managing a large and heterogeneous device pool. It’s a complicated and multifaceted process, but one that can pay big rewards in terms of increased productivity and efficiency, cost savings, responsiveness, and employee satisfaction.

Related Links

1. The March Towards Mobilization

2. Challenges To Making The Enterprise Road-Ready

3. Making mobile testing manageable

4. Smartphone application testing

5. Mobile Software Testing