Enterprise mobility only seems new. In fact, it’s been around for more than a decade. The difference is that, until now, access to the enterprise was through a laptop and a Virtual Private Network (VPN). And, of course, the enterprise applications weren’t “mobilized”; they didn’t have to be. With a large laptop screen and keyboard and touchpad, it was easy to use those applications “as is.”
With the nearly viral spread of smartphones and the equally rapid adoption of tablets, more and more employees are essentially mobile. But trying to navigate a standard enterprise application interface on a smartphone is a painful experience (and it’s only a little bit better on a tablet). So employees, who recognize the computing potential of their mobile devices, are driving the demand for enterprise-to-mobile capabilities – capabilities that are, in the way they function, far more mobile and much less enterprise
Yet, as soon as organizations start approaching enterprise mobility in the same way they approach enterprise application development, the future moves farther away. The time, manpower, and money required to develop mobile apps that duplicate existing enterprise functionality can break virtually any budget.
The reality is that employees don’t need an entire application. They only need the parts of it that they use on a regular basis. Not everyone who uses an ERP system uses the manufacturing components, not everyone who uses presentation software uses animation, and not everyone who uses a CRM application uses its marketing automation capabilities. Instead, they might only need to look up current orders, modify the content of a single slide for a business development presentation, or update contact information in a CRM database.
Those tasks and workflows shouldn’t require (and probably don’t merit) a standalone mobile app. But they do warrant access from a smartphone or tablet for numerous reasons – from increasing employee productivity to speeding up the sales process or improving operations. Companies have to accommodate this.
Why? Because enterprise mobility isn’t going away. It’s merely the latest evolution in B2E (business to employee) interactions, and it’s growing by millions of employees a year – millions of employees who have their own unique assortment of enterprise-dependent activities that have to bee performed every working day.
To resist this evolution is to limit an organization’s potential in terms of efficiency, revenue, and hiring ability – employees who have enterprise-to-mobile access in their currents jobs are very unlikely to join companies who don’t provide it.
Any company that complains about the cost of enterprise mobility, however, isn’t looking hard enough at their options for employees – the ones who need business task mobility. They don’t need standalone apps and the development costs that go with them. They just need to connect to the applications and data that are already there… but through a user interface that’s specifically mobile – that uses the same type of pulldown menus and navigation options common to any native mobile app. That’s what businesses have to provide to stay abreast of the future. And that’s what self-service, cloud-based technologies (like Webalo’s) provide.
IT can opt to delegate the creation of mobile interactions to the departments that need them, simply because anyone can learn Webalo’s configuration method, even if they have no IT skills of any kind. And, instead of projects that require a familiarity with programming, the installation and integration of development software, and the need for detailed “specs” about what to create, companies can deliver business task mobility in a matter of minutes for the equivalent of pennies an app.
In a world with millions (and, potentially, billions) of employees with mobile devices in the post-laptop era of smartphones and tablets, enterprise mobility can’t be something that’s “nice to have.” It’s something that organizations must have to remain competitive, to remain cost-effective, and to remain in existence.
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