January 29 2015 0comment

How to enable employee productivity with Mobile applications

Mobility started as consumer phenomena and soon made inroads into enterprise. One of the key byproducts of IT consumerization is the increasing incidence of mobile applications and bring your own device. With many enterprises making investment in tablets and smart phone to deploy various business applications right from sales, service, research and spanning into internal processes of HR, finance etc mobility has become more than just a trend; it has evolved into a revolution that has transformed the way we do business and quickened the pace of change for IT functions.

Some of the key applications which has direct relationship with employee productivity are:

Mobile Email applications – This is the most basic application helping your employees to do their jobs whenever/wherever they are needed, irrespective of their location. The ability to use email on-the-go can ultimately make an employee more accessible and responsive overall. But the key is to deploy a secure mobile application and not the one available in free or default zone to ensure data security.

Online Meeting and collaborating mobile application – improves collaboration and sharing. There are many applications available to collaborate online over mobile or tablet. This enables work from any location. Field employees can have direct access to company networks on the front line.

Field force data collection mobile application – Reduce time spent on data entry. Employees working in the field or at home no longer have to wait until they’re back in the office to transcribe the data they worked on once already. This also avoids human errors and generates quality data back in your core systems. Field force applications also comes integrated with location based services which further helps supervisors to track and allocate tasks efficiently.

Line of business mobile application – Depending what the purpose and nature of the job, various line of business applications can be used. Sales force automation, service ticket management, lead management, collection management, survey etc are few common applications which have a direct impact on the top line. As a result, the sales person for example, can take orders right from customer premises and mobilize the delivery while at the same time can access a corporate resource, such as product sheet, FAQs etc to address customer queries at an ease and with better speed.

Support function mobile application – Mobile applications meant to transact through HR, finance etc like leave requests & approvals, travel management, time sheet, paystub, purchase order creation & approval, purchase requisition creation & approval etc can significantly addresses the system bottlenecks and improves not only turnaround time but also addresses job satisfaction. E.g SAP Fiori is now free and if you have SAP ERP it is much easier and faster to roll these applications.

IM application – Free messaging mobile applications are some of the most popular applications available today in the consumer segment and your employees bring them to office as well. While it tremendously improves collaboration and takes messaging to new heights with the enablement of multimedia, looking for an enterprise grade IM application especially along with a Mobile Device Management solution can not only give similar benefits but also takes care of the security aspect.

Documents share – Publically available cloud storage may not be best practice from security point of view but there are solutions available to secure a business-centric environment. If you keep your data in the cloud, your employees can access it from anywhere, from any device, and instantly update it for your other users to see.Enterprise mobility tremendously improves the productivity of your workforce, however it is critical to have this as a part of your overall Enterprise Mobility Strategy to best leverage the endless possibilities it can bring to your employee, customer and partners.