technology
Moving to
Mobility
MOBILE TECHNOLOGY IS GEARING UP TO HAVE A BIG IMPACT ON BUSINESS
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 20 years
since the world’s first “smart phone” was
released. Back in 1994, the “Simon” of-fered
a touch screen and new “apps”
including a calendar, a calculator, a note-pad
and even fax connectivity.
Two decades later, the features and
functionality of smart phones have re-fined
and expanded to the point where
today, these devices are capable of tack-ling
challenges that previously only super
computers could support. Not surpris-ingly,
smart phone popularity has also
skyrocketed. By the end of 2014,
projections estimate there will
be more than 7.7 billion
mobile devices in the world
– more devices than there are
people.
But for the past seven years, in
some respects, the world has been
playing catch-up. When the iPhone
launched in 2007, apps were still a new
frontier. Suddenly the lid was blown off
the potential of just how “smart” a smart
phone could be. Since then, the rise of mo-bile
devices and applications has changed
how we communicate, share and even
live. It’s no surprise mobile is now also
changing how the enterprise runs and, es-sentially,
how we work.
In fact, mobile is becoming a major
business priority. Eighty-one per cent
of companies surveyed believe mobile
capabilities will fundamentally change
the way they do business. Eighty-four per
cent of chief information officers (CIOs)
rate mobile solutions as critical areas of
investment. New trends are also emerg-ing
as organizations have expanded their
view of mobile applications from what
was initially a business-to-consumer
(B2C) proposition to a business-to-business
(B2B) model, and now toward
a third wave of business-to-employee
(B2E) applications.
The result: from connecting staff in
the field to linking up with a home of-fice,
companies are leveraging mobile to
better enable employee collaboration and
productivity.
KEEPING CONNECTED
The enterprise that strongly embraces
mobile will unleash empowered employ-ees,
reconfigure individual workflows
and stimulate skill acquisition. A
proof point is demonstrated by
Apple and IBM now collab-orating
to develop mobile
solutions geared specifically
to help organizations in var-ious
sectors re-imagine the
way they enable employees.
This partnership signals
a shift in moving employ-ees
away from “random acts
of mobility” to mobility that
means something for business.
While email, scheduling and tex-ting
may have formed the lion’s share of
employees’ mobile activity in the past, the
future will look quite different.
According to an industry analyst
firm, Gartner, employees using mobile
By Nicole Summers
Pixel Embargo/ Shutterstock.com HRPATODAY.CA ❚ NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 ❚ 35
