It’s safe to say that people love their personal devices. They also love being able to use them to work from anywhere at any time. In many cases, their jobs call for that level of flexibility. Empowering a mobilized workforce may seem complex and induce some nail biting in IT departments, but the transition to mobile can be seamless if you identify potential barriers and do the proper planning in advance.
Barrier #1: The End User
Of course, employees are not a barrier—they’re the main reason why your business needs to go mobile. So if they’re not your primary concern in rolling out a mobile strategy, it’s bound to stumble. From selecting devices to deploying enterprise applications, the end user must be factored in across your entire plan. An unhappy mobilized workforce can lead to low adoption rates (see Barrier #3), lagging performance, and a poor return on your mobility investment. Understanding your employees’ needs ahead of time will make the shift to mobile much smoother.
Barrier #2: Shifting Device Contexts
The best enterprise application solutions travel well—from desktops to phones to tablets and beyond. By selecting applications that are easy to use regardless of the device, you’ll ensure not only stronger performance from your employees, but also positive returns from your customers. For instance, imagine a salesperson who’s unable to access essential documents on her iPad in the middle of a customer engagement. Picture how awkward it could be to interact with a badly performing app while face to face with a major client. To avoid scenarios like these, SaaS companies have begun to guarantee that their solutions will extend smoothly across devices. But sometimes you still have to customize to give users the performance they need.
Barrier #3: App Adoption
Familiar. Comfortable. Intuitive. Keep these three words in mind when selecting enterprise applications for your workforce. If desktop applications are currently in use across your enterprise, explore how mobile-ready they are. If they’re not, it’s time to customize to meet your users’ needs. We highly recommend customizing off-the-shelf solutions instead of developing in-house applications from scratch—you’ll save money and avoid the heavy lifting.
Barrier #4: Leaving Too Much to Chance
No matter what kind of mobility solution you decide to roll out, Mobile Application Management (MAM) solutions are a must. MAM can incorporate a range of key elements, such as user authentication, event management, and reporting. While it provides less oversight of the devices employees use, it offers a greater degree of control over the applications themselves, giving your organization the peace of mind to free up your workforce.
When you take a close look at these hurdles, they don’t seem that intimidating after all. Ultimately, it’s all about taking a holistic view of user needs and applying thoughtful planning to your strategy. If you keep the right considerations in mind, you’ll wind up doing more than give employees secure access to the applications they need—you’ll transform the way work gets done.
The post Beyond Security: Identifying the Barriers to Mobilizing Your Workforce appeared first on Enterprise Mobile.
