Putting in place an organisation-wide mobility strategy
will rise up the IT department agenda in 2006 and this, I am
afraid, will cause pain.
In many large enterprises, about 20% of the workforce has a
company-provided mobile device. That figure will rise during the
next few years. According to research firm Forrester, CIOs in
Europe and the US rate mobile workforce issues as a top five
priority and CIOs worldwide expect mobile workforce issues to
increase in importance.
Organisations that embrace mobility are seeing many benefits.
Productivity has improved as employees can keep vital projects
alive while travelling or at other sites. By supporting flexible
working and aiding an individual's productivity, a mobile device
contributes to their job satisfaction and helps organisations to
compete in the war for talent.
The "use your own mobile and expense it" policy that has been
conveniently adopted by many companies causes a serious drag on
administration and often leaves employees out of pocket and
unimpressed.
A company's mobility needs will change as the business grows and
adapts to market forces, so flexibility is key. The first essential
rule is that mobility solutions must be born out of the needs of
the company and its employees.
Understand the way the organisation operates and figure out how
mobility can deliver improvements. Consider each group of employees
separately and ask the questions:
- What is the job function of senior management?
- What are the demands and challenges and how can mobility
support them?
- What are the costs and benefits of providing a mobile
service?
- What does this mean for the technology department in terms of
support, deployment and asset management?
- How and where do managers who need mobile service
operate?
Manufacturers have created such attractive and intuitive devices
that the cleverness of the hardware often overshadows the
rationale. The association between a mobile e-mail service and
Blackberry devices, for example, can skew the debate.
"We need everyone to have a Blackberry" is a different
proposition to, "We need everyone to have a mobile device that can
support e-mail."
For example, most of our senior executives carry Blackberrys to
handle their e-mail, but the most common mobile devices at BDO Stoy
Hayward are Orange 3G Mobile Office Cards as we have hundreds of
professional staff working from client sites who need continual
e-mail access, including attachments, and regular access to our IT
infrastructure. We also use the Orange SPV C500.
The second essential lesson is to try to keep mobility simple.
Do not be put off by bundle-obsessed mobile operators' sales reps
who tout solutions before listening to the problem.
With the solution we used at BDO, Orange partnered with us on
the strategy and roll-out to create a customised solution to meet
our business needs. That way we got exactly what we needed,
including a suitable fleet of manageable devices.
A portfolio of mobile devices from different manufacturers can
equate to a number of different operating systems and interfaces,
immediately complicating staff training and support.
It also affects the back-end of the IT system, such as the
e-mail and Blackberry servers, which can start to make things
become unnecessarily technical and time-consuming. There has to be
a balance between a range of devices and ease of central
management.
The third essential lesson is to be security-minded. Many
essential benefits come from mobile-enabling the workforce, yet, as
we know, security will be the main challenge for organisations
operating in the foreseeable future and this should be a top
priority at every level of the organisation.
Organisations should take a pragmatic, centralised and
multi-layered approach to security. You have to accept that mobile
devices will be more regularly lost or stolen, so the first step is
to ensure that any device storing corporate data is password
protected and that communication is encrypted.
Also, make sure you set up a process to deal with the devices
when the inevitable happens. For example, at BDO, Orange 3G Mobile
Office Cards will only work with the laptop and user they are
deployed to, which increases security and asset management.
Centralised remote management, such as wiping data from Blackberrys
when they go missing, has already delivered benefits in the
field.
Security must come first. Whether it is confidential business
data or entrusted customer information that is compromised, a
security breach can strike a costly and potentially fatal blow to
confidence.
The increasing focus on work/life balance means that mobility is
now a must-have for all IT strategies. Regardless of whether
applications are fast or secure, those that cannot be accessed when
and where they are needed are of little use.
Only when applications are securely available any time, any
place, anywhere and on any device can the focus shift to the
end-user experience - and the acceleration of business success.
Graham Knight is head of technology at accountancy firm
BDOStoy Hayward