3 Ways to Ride the Mobility Wave in a Digital World

Whether it’s ordering groceries online or finding a restaurant to order dinner, consumers have gotten into the habit of doing everything online, and mostly from their smartphones. The digital shift has happened, and it’s largely leaning towards mobility.

So if your company hasn’t already gone mobile, then it’s time to do so, and fast!

The opportunity is huge because everyone is impacted from it, right from your internal employees to your customers outside.

There are three ways you can do this.

1. Empower your Employees

One is to empower your employees with readily available apps to enhance their personal productivity. There are plenty of them available, right from taking notes to personal messaging. They’re available as free versions with limited functionality and paid ones for more enhanced features.

2.Use MDM to Control Mobile Users

Two, since the line between personal and business mobility has blurred, the same device is used by employees for both personal and official use. Here’s where you need control to block unproductive apps in office at-least and ensure complete security of all mobile devices. For this, you’ll need MDM solutions at the back-end to control device access, and security software on each device to provide safety from malware.

The first two methods can easily be addressed with ready-made, off the shelf software that’s easily available. It’s just a matter of choosing the right one and ensuring consistent use across the organization.

3.Build your own App Eco-System

Third and most important is to build your own app eco-system. This is where you need to put your thinking caps on and observe the key business pain points. They’ll differ for different industry verticals, and would require keen observation, discussions with various BU heads, to provide a mobile app roadmap with clear cut business benefits outlined.

The trend in banking for instance, is to replace mobile PoS terminals with Android based apps for field agents. It saves them the burden of having to lug around a heavy terminal. Plus, the transactions happen immediately for collections, payments, etc. so they don’t have to report back to office to punch in all data by the EoD.

Likewise, one trend on the shop floor of manufacturing companies and logistics business is to enable shop floor managers with a mobile app that provides them regular updates on their mobiles about inventory, production output, product dispatch/receipt status, etc. It saves them the burden of having to run from pillar to post every time they need to check even small things.