According to a report by IDC, world’s mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion, representing 37.2% of the total workforce by 2015 and the APAC region witnessing the maximum growth. Clearly, the work force is going ‘Mobile’ and there is an imperative need from enterprises for the smartphone technology to get smarter with the ‘smart’ technology solutions.
The need arises from today’s dynamic workforce who requires access to business information across time zones and geographies. Companies and employees are highly dependent on mobile technology to connect with one another, conduct business meetings, and attend conference calls and other activities, while on-the-go. The key here is to make business more productive by utilising latest technology innovations.
Recently, BlackBerry in association with GfK launched a global report which stated that most professionals now see productivity as a personal priority.
The report further states that 67% of business smartphone users are looking to improve their productivity and 69% are constantly looking for new ways to get things done as efficiently as possible. Hence, an imperative need for smart and secure ‘productivity and mobile’ solutions for today’s workforce.
From the gamut of smart inventions, mobile applications have made a huge impact on business.
Increasingly, small and medium businesses are investing in smart devices like smartphones, tablets enabling mobile workforce, with 24×7 connectivity and effective use of technology to increase efficiency.
With the availability of apps to support internal processes, for example CRM, HR and other key services; they are exposed to a vast and true working platform, increasing productivity multi-fold. For instance an application called Evernote lets one take notes, snapshots and recordings and automatically synchronises to a smartphone, which is time saving and useful for meetings.
Additionally, internal and external secure communication tools like eBBM Suite which are designed to enable mobile workers to be more productive on the go, while meeting the needs for security, manageability and control wherever they are. This remote access to information has enabled companies to offer employees strike work life balance as they can easily take up a task from the comfort of their homes.
Team work is another important aspect that charts the way to success for companies. Seamless and effective collaboration between employees delivers clear value to an organisation and plays a critical role in charting strategic growth. With the help of disruptive technology solutions like mobile apps, fostering effective cooperation between team members is not difficult, any more. They are powerful, easy to use and nurture seamless collaboration.
Companies are deploying mobile apps to improve employee efficiency. For instance, BlackBerry has an app called Conqu, which is an easy to use yet powerful task management tool. It allows users to assign a project, energy and time required to finish a task, and has additional filtering criteria such as tags or contexts to any task.
As more employees access corporate data remotely, keeping information secure has become a top concern for all organisations. According to 2013 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 71% of data breaches have resulted from targeting user devices.
To combat risky situations like data breach, companies are adopting secure enterprise mobility solutions. BlackBerry’s BES10 is an enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution that delivers a compelling end-user experience while protecting the organisation from data loss, theft and potential attacks. BES10 has received top-tier approval from enterprise and government agencies for its containerisation, encryption, and two-way authentication capabilities.
While apps is the way to achieve the sales target and increase business productivity, the actual success lies in overcoming the challenges like early adoption and educating the end users on the functionality of the apps.
As India goes digital, BlackBerry will continue to work towards enabling the developers with the latest technology, tech support and devices to build world class solutions/applications.
Annie Mathew
The writer is director, alliances and business development, BlackBerry India
