Today, we are increasingly mobile and always on the go. The proliferation of tablets and smartphones has increased dramatically over the past decade and offers everyone from managers and employees to consumers potential access to your company. Chance are, your company has already developed a communications and collaboration platform in-house what about the mobile dimension of your communication and collaboration strategy?
BYOD – Employees Find a Way
The workforce is impressively innovative, and if left unchecked and supported, employees will find a way to increase their mobility. Whether your business supports a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) mobile strategy or not, you can expect your employees will use their own devices and possibly outside applications, like Dropbox or GoogleDocs to take work with them. Employees might forward their office phone or email to personal numbers and addresses and use various devices with multiple OS platforms. If your company encourages BYOD policies, there are inherent challenges in managing multi-OS devices as well as the potential to comingle enterprise and personal data and applications.
Developing a Mobile Strategy
Having a mobile strategy in place means including security as well as seamless integration of existing applications. There is no boilerplate mobile strategy you can use to develop and implement a plan. Your mobile strategy is as unique as your company and should reflect the needs of everyone affected by your organization. However, there are steps you can take to identify and develop a mobile strategy that creates synergy and supports security.
Enterprise Mobility Management
Understanding your employees will go mobile whether you have a policy in place or not is what prompts companies to take the first step of developing and implementing enterprise mobility management. Enterprise mobility management is the all-encompassing management of mobile components including telecom management, mobile device management, and security.
Mobility management considers mobile device management as well as mobile application and mobile information management. The goal of your mobile management strategy is to create a seamless environment where employees can access the needed information, applications, and tools on their mobile devices and in a constrained environment. Often, accessing the required tools and artifacts while outside of the office is not intuitive or easy on mobile devices. Developing and adopting a system and protocol for accessing data and applications helps employees while on the go.
Security in Your Mobile Strategy
Mobile security is an essential facet of your mobile strategy. The security of your system is the safety blanket that protects the entire organization and all stakeholders, employees, and customers. Taking a holistic approach to mobile security means protecting your company in the event of lost mobile devises, rogue applications, and data breaches. Security includes protecting mobile devices that access enterprise data and applications, securing the content and collaboration on mobile devices, safeguarding applications and data, and managing access.
Mobile First is User First
The software and applications that enable communication and collaboration must shift to mobility. Building a truly unified communications and collaborations system should take a mobile-first approach. Applications made to support mobile devices are imperative to the user experience. This is because users are more likely to pick up a smartphone or a tablet rather than turn to a desktop to execute an application. The notion mobile-first is a shift to users-first, who measure their happiness and willingness to work and innovate on their experience.
Mobile strategies do not develop overnight and are unique to each organization. They are also a holistic and inclusive extension of the home office that allows users to experience full operability in even the most constrained environments. Developing and implementing a mobile strategy is must include the components that will allow for seamless integrations while remaining secure. If you already have a unified communications partner or are considering one for your business, open the discussion of mobility as well and embrace mobile communication and collaboration with confidence.