Impact Of Mobility On Business Functions

By Author: Susan Smith
Total Articles: 132
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Gartner, a world's leading information technology research firm predicts that tablet purchases by businesses will increase from 23 million units 53 million units by 2016. This is a phenomenal growth of over 300%. They also predicted that smartphones purchases will reach 1 billion mark in 2013.

As a direct outcome of the growing proliferation of mobile in our lives, an increasing number of businesses are connecting to their customers or partners through mobile devices. Mobile technology is becoming an absolute necessity for businesses and employees too. It is transforming the way enterprises handle business processes such as marketing, IT, finance, production, logistics etc. The driving force behind this trend is much more than just the device - smartphones and tablets. It is about the fact the mobility offers solutions to business processes, transforms them and improves productivity and profitability.

Enterprise mobility brings benefits across different aspects of the business.

Employee empowerment - Mobility provides workforce the flexibility and convenience to access data, emails, apps etc. at the office, ...
... at home, and while traveling. This anywhere, anytime secured access makes it easier for the employees to manage work without having to be bound at a particular location.

In addition to this, mobility also offers better opportunities to communicate and collaborate, among employees for more knowledge transfer, for easier and faster business tasks and thereby boosts productivity when people don’t have to wait for the information they need. Providing the access to the right data to the right people at the right time is a critical requirement for agile and informed decision-making. Mobility facilitates the same, empowering the road warriors by keeping them connected while on the go. An empowered employee performs better, and more efficiently.

Sales - Mobile technology allows Sales people with an access to email, databases and other important information- on the go. They can now integrate the mobile devices with CRM applications to get the real time inventory, access to client information, meeting times and background information, which can increase win rates and shorten the sales cycle.

During meetings, accesses to the relevant data allow the sales executive complete transactions and close the deal then and there. Electronic signatures can be taken once the deal is closed therefore cutting down the time and paper work involved. Shorter sales cycles also reduce the cost of the selling process and increase cash flow.

Operations - Mobility streamlines the internal processes that can further increase operational efficiency.

Supply chain - With the new and powerful mobile supply chain and logistics applications, employees can now be more efficient with speed and accuracy. These applications allow all the teams in the supply chain, whether in the field, or in a central location to be connected in real-time. This leads to cost and time savings.

Workload management – Managers now have their teams’ availability, schedule, and current workloads at their fingertips through the work management applications. They can dynamically allocate new jobs to the members based on their availability and utilization.

Decision-making – Mobile dashboards, portals, and applications allow transparent, real-time data availability at different levels of the hierarchy. This allows for rapid decisions to be taken when they matter the most, leading to efficiency gains.

Customer experience: Mobility can improve the purchase experience at point of sale and real- time alert s improves the response times by resolving prob¬lems more quickly. All in all, Mobility offer personalization, better customer engagement and can provide customers with a much better experience, reducing the chance to switch to a competitor.

Mobility is a boon for the business as it can positively impact all functions of the same. If you do not yet have a mobility strategy, you are already too late. If your business intends to go places, go mobile!

The author is associated with one of the top mobile development solutions provider, iPhone apps development Dallas firm and iPad application development company