5 Key Benefits of Adopting Enterprise Mobility Solutions

Investing in new technology is not a decision that can be taken lightly, and requires careful assessment and strategy. Such is the case with digital transformation, particularly around enterprise mobility. While it can be a significant investment in both time and resources, the many benefits that enterprise mobility provides a business or organization on an individual as well as a collective level can often help to justify the price tag. Examining some of the key benefits can help when assessing whether or not it is time to adopt an enterprise mobility strategy for your business.

Improved collaboration

While the global pandemic sent a number of traditional office-based workers to remote working environments, many of these workers have still been able to perform their duties from a home-based office or cooperative working space, where they still have access to laptops, phones, and a stationary place to execute work. While these workers were no longer sitting next to each other in a traditional office, they were still able to work collaboratively through traditional channels like phone calls or emails, or UC tools that were accessible on a computer or laptop, which meant that they were still able to remain in communication without missing a beat.

However, a number of industries, including healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and hospitality, have long required most of their workers to be mobile in order to perform the essential functions of the job. These mobile, “deskless,” workers need to stay in contact with each other, with their desk-based teammates, and often with customers, patients, or guests. Memos, circulars and emails will help to an extent, but the ability to use voice calls and also hold conference calls while on the move is vital in ensuring everyone is working collaboratively and efficiently, without needing to find a desk or landline any time communication is necessary. By investing in an enterprise mobility strategy that prioritizes these deskless workers, and giving them Mobile UC solutions, they remain a part of the conversation no matter where they are working, saving valuable time, breaking down siloes, and easing frustrations.

Increased Efficiency

A vital element of any successful quest to produce productivity gains is increased efficiency. The most that can be achieved in the shortest time and with the fewest resources will add the greatest amount to this and, crucially, bolster the bottom line.

When it comes to mobile workers, a clear drag on efficiency will be a situation where some people cannot swiftly access the tools or information they need to complete an action until they find a desk or workstation.

Not only does it slow down the execution of the task in hand; the time spent finding a workspace with the right tools will detract from the capacity to undertake other tasks.

Whether it is about accessing documents faster, fulfilling orders from anywhere or being able to talk to customers sooner, the benefits of being able to get things done quickly are obvious, not least the increased customer or guest satisfaction of the job being done sooner. Your productivity and efficiency are their happiness – and with it their loyalty. And, in the case of the healthcare industry, often every moment counts, so increased efficiency through enterprise mobility solutions can literally help to save lives.

Plenty of firms who use enterprise mobility or are thinking of adopting it understand this. Earlier this year Business 2 Community highlighted the findings of a CITO research survey showing 53 per cent of businesses thought enterprise mobility could increase their efficiency.

On top of all this, enterprise mobility means you don’t need to look at paperwork. That means not just more mobile working, but no cabinets full of files, no trees being cut down to produce documents and the efficiency of not having to have printers operating all the time. And, with information being stored and accessed digitally because of updated technology including enterprise mobility , many more security measures can be put into place to ensure sensitive information is safe from falling into the wrong hands.

Increased safety

Safety at work is an important issue. Legislation in the UK is now highly extensive. Not only do pieces of law like the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act still apply, but they have been supplemented in some areas, such as the Work at Height Regulations 2005. Additionally in the US, Alyssa’s Law in the Education industry is gaining traction, while safety for frontline healthcare workers is becoming much more of a priority.

All this is designed to keep workers safe, but there is a lot of detail that goes in to a workplace safety strategy. Managers may have a big challenge, whether it is the basic aspects of keeping a workplace safe or the more challenging task of maintaining safety on building sites or places that inherently involve more risk, like manufacturing environments or in lone worker situations.

An enterprise mobility solution can help in many ways – from providing an immediate lifeline to those at most pressing risk, to storing information about workplace safety strategies so everyone can access the plan from anywhere in the event of an emergency, to even providing live video feeds or open phone lines so emergency respondents can have the most information possible when coming on scene.

Job Satisfaction

News headlines around the globe are highlighting a workplace crisis of attracting and maintaining talent. Employees are facing burnout, mental health crises, and overall dissatisfaction on the job, and, perhaps most critical, they are feeling underappreciated by their employers who are not providing them with optimal resources to do their jobs, or working to create supportive work spaces where concerns can be heard and needs can be met.

If you are an employer, your staff will be pleased to have the tools to hand to perform to the max. That is why employee retention is an area that is directly impacted by the use of mobile telephony. These mobile devices often help staff do more while carrying less, and can enable so many more workflows than traditional tools. Often as sleek and intuitive as the cell phone in their pocket that they use every day, workers are able to communicate, access information, serve customers and guests, treat patients, and complete critical job workflows like inventory management or guest room turnover or machinery monitoring all from one enterprise mobility solution.

Competitive advantage

As mentioned above, being able to complete tasks more efficiently and swiftly has some very clear benefits, not least in customer satisfaction or in improving patient outcomes. This is one – but not the only – way in which enterprise mobility gives you a competitive advantage.

When it comes to customer service or caring for guests, by being able to not only satisfy their needs and meet their requests, but go beyond their expectations, you can gain a reputation for delivering great results, improve loyalty with your existing customers or guests, and perhaps even attract some away from the competition. An enterprise mobility solution that allows for quick responses, access to the most up-to-date information, and one that enables critical workflows will help to free up time for this valuable attention you can now spend serving customers and guests.

In the case of healthcare, freeing up valuable time for care teams and enabling them to provide even better care to patients can help to improve patient outcomes. Improved patient outcomes can lead to better HCHAPS scores, which, in turn, can help lead to more funding opportunities, or secure your hospital a coveted ranking that would help to attract top talent over other hospitals.

There are many strategic steps you can do to increase customer retention, or to improve patient outcomes, but ultimately nothing beats offering great service, care, and reliability that an investment in enterprise mobility can help to provide.

Combining the benefits

If the last point suggests that some of these benefits may be interlinked, that is because they are.

Not only does more efficiency give you an advantage in a competitive world; it is also true that better safety and an improved tools to do the job can make a company better to work for and increase retention. And lower staff turnover means more experienced, skilled teams who are used to working well together, helping you remain efficient and keep customers happy.

This makes for a virtuous cycle and it can be achieved by maximizing the benefits of enterprise mobility. By using it to its potential, more efficient, flexible and safe staff can achieve their goals more readily and provide the best service to your customers, guests, or patients.