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Think about this: A recent Frost & Sullivan survey of more than 250 C-level executives revealed that in the vast majority of their organizations, employees routinely use mobile phones to conduct business—and, more importantly, for two-thirds of those users, a mobile device is their telephony end point of choice. Even when employees are working in the office, they often turn to their mobile phones for making work-related calls, texting customers, and otherwise conducting business.
Is your organization ready for this new mobile world?
Of course, companies have been dealing with mobile employees—and the need to provide access to business communications to traditional road warriors like sales and service personnel—for years. But today, not only has the idea of the traditional work environment changed, but the rapid, almost universal adoption of smart phones has changed the very definition of a “mobile” employee. Nowadays, even people who spend most if not all of their official work day in the office routinely work and communicate with colleague and customers outside of that environment—on evenings and weekends, and during the day when they leave the office for lunch or other appointments. Furthermore, even when they’re at their desks, workers are often opting to use their mobile devices tom call and text contacts, rather than the clunky desk phone sitting next to them.
And users today want to be able to choose their own mobile devices, a trend known as “bring-your-own-device,” or BYOD. Frost & Sullivan research shows that a growing number of employees are using their personal mobile devices for business purposes, with or without approval or support by IT or management. But not only has the way people work changed; customers today also have the expectation that businesses are always available and responsive, with a new generation preferring texting over email or the telephone.
This can be beneficial to the organization, but it is also a risk. Frost & Sullivan recommends that companies leverage the BYOD trend by extending corporate communications to their employees’ mobile devices, ensuring they have a single business identity as well as the advanced communications capabilities users like on their smart phones. But it’s important to remember that the need applies not just to “mobile” workers, but to the entire enterprise; as smart phones are increasingly used to conduct business anytime, anywhere (even in the office), extending mobile capabilities to all employees is critical.
Smart businesses are planning for more than basic integration; they’re thinking about how to leverage the power of smart phones to enable capabilities beyond what you can get from the average desk phone and traditional telephony providers. For many companies, the solution is a cloud-based communications system that gives employees access to a variety of communications services—including robust telephony, texting, one-click conferencing, and integration with other cloud applications—along with the ability to integrate and use smart devices, whether they belong to them or the organization.
Empowering businesses to not only leverage BYOD, but to also take advantage of the flexibility and robust capabilities of the smart phone using cloud-based services, enhances productivity, improves efficiency and improves customer service. To learn more, please register
here.
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