As more enterprises embrace the BYOD movement (bring your own device), a growing number of business owners are recognizing the core benefits of mobility. Some have even started to believe that enterprise mobility is having a greater impact on their organizations than the dot com bubble did in the 90s.
Mobility today is affecting the way businesses operate in powerful ways. From apps that streamline customer interaction and facilitate business processes, to services managing the BYOD security and marketing strategy of organizations, mobility is clearly playing a viable role in critical business decision making.
Some of the notable benefits of enterprise mobility for a business include:
· Integration and delivery of new business services more quickly
· Increase in employee productivity and connectivity
· Delivering functionality quicker than traditional equivalents such as desktops
Developing an enterprise mobility strategy
Developing this strategy may initially seem like a daunting task, but you can get started today to develop a mobility strategy that ensures your business is prepared for the evolving enterprise IT landscape. Here are a few steps to create an effective enterprise mobility strategy:
-Define your goals and requirements
The first step to any mobility initiative is to determine your business goals. You’ll need to consider things such as the ability of this initiative to create new opportunities for your business and what technologies, applications and devices will be needed to capitalize on those opportunities.
According to Maribel Lopez, principal research analyst at Lopez Research LLC, a comprehensive mobile development and management strategy will be the foundation of every successful company embracing enterprise mobility.
-Increase agility through mobile applications
In order to be successful in today’s world of enterprise mobility, you need to be agile in terms of responding to employee and customer needs. Adapting to the rapid-pace world of mobile applications can increase your business ability, enabling it to capitalize new opportunities.
Enterprise mobile apps offer benefits for engagement. They will become a central base for management, employees, and anyone else related to the company; easily supporting company data processing and storage. They also provide greater control over BYOD security by giving you options such as revoking access from malicious devices. According to Kony, you can quickly define, develop, and prototype multichannel apps through cloud collaboration. Such a development strategy allows businesses to build richer cloud-connected apps that increase employee and customer loyalty.
-Ensure security through enterprise mobility management
A good enterprise mobility management strategy after BYOD approval and application development involves a mixture of mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM). These two technologies help in addressing concerns related to enterprise mobility security.
For example, mobile application management helps you to implement out-of-box policies for time; date and device feature usage, as well as create custom policies to meet the mobility security requirements of your company. Likewise, mobile device management helps in restricting unauthorized devices from accessing the company network or an enterprise app store.
-Measuring usage patterns
Measuring usage patterns through analytics will help you understand how everyone is interacting with enterprise applications. Data capture and analysis is the key to making sure that your mobility investments are indeed paying off.
For example, user metrics such as peak usage times and number of devices accessing an app can help determine how employees are dealing with newly deployed applications. Measuring such metrics will also help in pinpointing issues in case of low usage percentage.
Enterprise mobility is now a critical business requirement. Companies embracing mobility platforms that optimize ongoing business processes and unlock employee productivity will gain a competitive advantage in the road ahead.
