Making Mobility Work For You

The “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) phenomenon that is capturing the attention of business owners in organizations of all sizes is even more relevant for SMBs that are constantly looking for ways to reduce expenses and “do more with less.” With employees leading the charge to use their own mobile devices for work — which decreases business costs — making mobility work for you by enabling a mobile workforce is practically a no-brainer.

The size of an SMB works to its benefit as well when incorporating consumer-oriented mobile devices and apps into the workplace. Since smaller companies often have quicker decision-making cycles compared to huge, bureaucratic corporations, they are able to accommodate a mobile work environment much more readily than their Fortune 500 counterparts.

In UBM TechWeb’s report, “The State of IT Consumerism,” more than 200 SMB business owners were surveyed on how mobility trends are affecting their organizations. In excess of 90 percent said they were satisfied with the returns they’ve seen from the use of personal mobile devices in their organizations, based on increased productivity and extended access to anytime information. Thirty-one percent of this group even went so far as to add that efficiency and productivity gains exceeded their expectations.

Employees share this enthusiasm. “The requirement from the end-user community is for devices they are familiar with and that they believe will increase their productivity,” said Andrew Braunberg, research director for enterprise networks and security at Current Analysis, a research and consulting firm. He added that businesses with highly mobilized environments tend to attract top talent.

Another key finding of the UBM study: The true value of IT consumerism is realized when it is part of a greater strategy to reduce costs, attract and retain additional business, and increase the SMB’s competitiveness through more effective business processes. Even with smaller IT staffs, the typical SMB can make mobility work for them by implementing a system that manages security and policies for a varied collection of devices, creating consistent business policies, and then extending the capabilities and business processes that are most commonly dictated by the traditional PBX. That’s exactly the path that Vertical followed when developing its ViewPoint Mobile application. A mobile extension of Vertical’s powerful Wave IP unified communications platform, it’s one of the first-ever applications to extend all of the functionality of the PBX, such as call forwarding, presence and availability, call recording, call reporting and more, to Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.

If you’re an SMB, think big … and start profiting from the latest mobile technologies and innovations that can make mobility work for you.

Steven J. De Korne is Vice President of Marketing for Vertical Communications and a 15-year telecommunications industry insider.

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