The capabilities of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have increased rapidly over the past five years, and the uptake of this technology has grown even faster. According to a recent study by Telsyte more than 1.2 million tablet devices will be sold in 2011 with at least 39 percent of these tablets having being bought through ‘pure’ business channels. It is my view that within 12 months the top 200 Australian companies will either be using or trialling tablets as well as a ‘mobile model’.
Predictions around mobile adoption in the workplace tend to cause headaches for any business owner as they attempt to stay ahead of the curve and provide work and lifestyle incentives to their staff, as well as provide innovative business resources, but it should be a key consideration for all companies. UXC Connect’s Mobility as a Service offers a fully hosted pay as you go solution to productivity, environmental and workspace sustainability. Anecdotally our customers say that being mobile has given their staff one-to-two hours per day of additional productivity among the many other benefits they’re achieving.
Real-world gains from tablet devices
Of course the big push is in the form of tablet devices as employees see the potential of these devices to impact their working life. Already, federal and state governments, as well as a number of major companies, are using tablets as part of their business’ IT solution. We have seen many opportunities in our government and legal clients’ day-to-day workflow for significant savings around the need to produce, print and update lengthy proposals, case work and briefing documents. By moving these publications to an electronic format, they can be updated and rolled out to the right stakeholders in real time. They are always updated with the latest information, changes can be made on the fly, and expensive printing and reprinting costs can be eradicated altogether. This can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing costs alone. And these applications and savings apply to businesses of any size.
Managing mobile devices
With potentially no boundaries or infrastructure, the management of tablets that connect to corporate Wi-Fi and infrastructure can potentially provide a lot of IT management issues when it comes to security, personal usage, provisioning access, enabling day-to-day use and overall management. Businesses that have been early adopters of tablet technology have found that it is not sufficient to simply provide mobile devices to employees and expect tangible business results. So the question is how do you use these devices to enhance user productivity and enable your business systems to factor in the lifestyle aspect of tablet devices without jeopardising your company’s security or business processes?
Creating an app environment for businesses
We work closely with our technology partners BigTinCan to provide a secure content distribution framework for our business customers to access applications on their mobile platforms. There are many tools businesses can use depending on their mobile application needs, including a secure application catalogue – imagine a secure business app store if you will – which can deliver private applications that are business specific as well as allowing controlled access to commercial applications found on iTunes and other similar stores.
Alternatively we also offer a secure dashboard design for the iPad that provides an interface to manage content distribution on a secure framework, so an employee can easily access corporate information on the move. The basic features of this dashboard include an easy to navigate interface and IT management administration controls to assign access rights to groups of documents as required. Its minimalist look and feel belies its depth of features as you can group information from within your organisation into a series of channels within the application. Each channel has a series of topics or stories associated with it that may include any number of PDFs, product information, videos, files, announcements and template documents to name a few. The employee can access not only the channels that they have access rights to, but also their own personal channel to manage their documents. Importantly all information is encrypted, and can be accessed, viewed and edited in the dashboard format.
Other interesting tools designed to make the most of tablet technology include a PDF search, favourites channel to save often-accessed files, write and share comments on the documents, and many other tools to enhance productivity on the move including RSS feeds. From a business point of view, employees are never without the information they need to work, share or take with them when out of the office.
Business uses for tablet technology
Mobile devices and apps, when correctly applied to your workforce, can improve all aspects of business performance, from customer engagement to service delivery and inventory management. As one example, UXC Connect has developed many customised solutions for businesses operating in Australia. One mobile application that we have developed for the pharmaceutical industry allows sales reps to demonstrate and deliver information in a fast and efficient way when they are speaking with doctors and nurses. This application not only acts as a dynamic presentation tool but also allows for sales representatives to manage clients and automate the day-to-day admin that many representatives in the real world would have to complete after hours in their own time. It allows a much better use of their time in waiting rooms and on the road, and it allows a more streamlined tracking of the business.
This type of usage model is at the core of business mobility – it’s about looking at a business’ processes, procuring the right device and then configuring that device and integrating it into a company’s existing systems.
–Denise Carson is Solutions Manager, UXC Connect, leading the enterprise integration of iPad, iPhone and other mobility technologies into large organisations.
