Are you itching to see your company grow by leaps and bounds? Still not satisfied with the excellent small business that you own? Do you want your business to become a reputable giant in the industry? This is good. This is how a true entrepreneur should feel. To become a true business mogul, you need to have big ambitions for your company and should always be looking to expand your business further.
This is where mobility comes in. It is the single most important factor that makes or breaks your expansion efforts. Mobility in business refers to all the technology, business practices and strategies that are used by a company to conduct business without depending solely on a single headquarters. Mobility allows a company to open up at different locations, work with different clients and vendors spread across the nation and to connect with employees and customers from around the globe.
However, mobility could be a fuzzy topic and most businesspeople define it in two ways. According to the latest study by Citrix Systems – the leader in virtualization, 28 percent of respondents defined mobility as the ability to be able to work from anywhere and on any device for the company. Another 22 percent defined mobility as the ability to be able to connect to the corporate network from outside the workplace. These definitions may differ slightly, but they go to show that mobility means different things for different companies. Based on future plans, employee-employer relationships, type of service or product offered by the company, geographical location, and other similar factors, mobility can imply vastly different practices for business.
Why your company needs a mobility plan
Every business has unique goals and milestones that it wants to achieve. As a result, the goals of mobility techniques will also be different for each company. However, many businesses seem to overlook this fact and use the ad hoc approach for business mobility. It is strongly recommended that a company carefully analyze its goals and the problems that it wishes to solve with regard to mobility and then get the necessary communication technologies and strategies in place to build mobility.
Luckily, the Citrix study shows that 47 percent of respondents have formal mobility strategies in place with 37 percent indicating that they are looking to have formal strategies within a year. This promising picture comes mainly due to the fact that most companies have now begun to realize how important it is to have formal mobility plans and strategies in place to implement mobility in a cost-effective, efficient and secure manner.
The study also shows that 24 percent of businesses agree that mobility can transform their business and that it should be the number one priority of the company. 21 percent agree that mobility differentiates a company from its competitors. If you feel the same way, you know how crucial mobility can be to your business.
You must already be aware that BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), cloud computing, virtualization, file-sharing systems, and enterprise app solutions are some of the best ways to implement mobility. But these are complex technologies that need significant investments and must be a long-term goal. Moreover, as technology is advancing rapidly, mobility systems must also be constantly updated, maintained and repaired. This adds to operational costs significantly. This is why it is so important to have a well thought out and realistic mobility plan before implementing one. Without a plan and by going in blind, mobility will cost you much more than necessary, will become outdated easily and will have the chances of becoming buggy and difficult to work with, making it a bane and not a boon for your company.
Tech or IT and business leaders in your company must formulate a mobility plan before any action is taken. Bringing in mobility experts to ratify the plan is also a wise move.
Benefits of mobility for your business
- Increased productivity
Employees these days often have to travel long distances to get to work and the commute can not only be emotionally and physically draining but can also eat into the time that the employee can devote to work. With mobility, your employees will be able to connect to the company network from their homes or even while they are commuting to start work and get to the most important, pressing tasks quickly. Traffic jams and other problems will have less of an impact on their productivity, as they will be able to work on the go with the help of their personal devices.
- Capture and retain the best talent
A large part of the workforce these days are unable to work for the company they want to because they do not want to relocate, or do not want to work full-time jobs in an office, as they want to be with their families. BYOD, cloud computing, enterprise apps, SaaS and file-sharing systems along with high-speed internet connections allow such talented yet inconvenienced employees to work from a far off location for the company. With mobility, you will be able to attract and manage top talent from around the world.
- Cater to a mobile world
As more and more businesses are implementing mobility systems in their workplaces, they are slowly ensuring that their business processes and technologies are complying with the mobile world. Mobile devices reign supreme and the need to increase mobility-optimized systems allows companies to gradually build more mobile-friendly systems.
