Building the mobile enterprise

It goes without saying that mobile devices and apps help us get things done on the go, often much faster and easier than with similar desktop applications. We are no longer tied to our desks, as we now have computers in the palm of our hands, in the form of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. According to IDC, a record 300 million smartphones were shipped globally during the second quarter of 2014.

This massive penetration rate is reflective of the rise of BYOD, where businesses are realising the productivity benefits of allowing employees to use their mobile devices for business processes, beyond simple email. Research from Telsyte earlier this year revealed that nearly two-thirds of Australian enterprises already have employees that use personal apps for work.

Pervasive access to information and services has become ‘standard', transforming our behaviour as consumers and workers. But what is the impact on the enterprise?

Moreover, how can organisations adapt and link these new mobile environments to engage with stakeholders?

Becoming a mobile enterprise

Becoming a mobile enterprise is much more than simply apps and BYOD. It is about embracing mobile technology to make access to products, services and processes much easier and faster than ever before - wherever and whenever customers and employees need them.

From an enterprise IT perspective, there are usually three main factors to consider, these include how to:

• Mobile-enable existing business applications

• Manage various mobile devices and applications

• Develop enterprise and consumer apps fast and scalable

Connecting the new mobile environment to the current IT landscape is one of the main challenges. On one hand, establishing seamless and secure integration with back-end systems is crucial to leveraging existing investments and avoiding building new IT silos. On the other hand, due to their complexity, such projects may quickly become big cost drivers. The key to driving cost efficiency is to provide an end-to-end solution for building cross-platform enterprise mobile apps, which are tightly integrated with the existing infrastructure.

Mobility management

Enterprises need to be able to manage a huge number of various mobile devices (enterprise or employee-owned) and apps effectively, as well as ensure security on the device and at app level, and reliably deploy apps to internal or external users.

For example, once a new employee is hired, he or she would be registered and assigned to a corresponding mobile user group. Using the enterprise app store, they can browse and install all apps assigned to their team. These could be preapproved productivity apps from public stores or enterprise applications, such as mobile business process management (BPM) or customer relationship management (CRM). If the employee leaves the company or his/her mobile device gets lost, all company data and applications could be deleted over the air.

Policy control

Fine-grained policies can define how apps or devices should be used in a business context. For instance, if a company wants to avoid inappropriate usage, apps could be easily configured to be usable only in a specific geographical location, such as a particular factory. For additional protection of sensitive data, the built-in camera of the device could be disabled. To continuously improve mobile return on investment and workforce productivity, app usage and user interaction could be monitored.

Once appropriate enterprise mobility management tools are implemented, enterprises can begin to develop and deploy apps to the users. The crucial factor here to remember is to keep developing efforts minimal and as scalable as possible.

James Wooster is vice president of Australia and New Zealand Software AG