As enterprises consider how technology can optimize business processes and empower collaboration, mobile continues to be adopted in order to achieve results. In the recent past, intranets and work space networks of computers were once high tech and forward thinking. Now that mobile computing devices are often more powerful than the standard enterprise computer, mobile is here to stay. Make no mistake about it, in 2013 mobile means business.
In the last 70 years, we’ve gone from room sized processing computers at MIT to pocket-sized computer that are orders of magnitude greater in computational capability. The rate of change has been blistering, and in the next decade the business world is destined to undergo some serious changes in computing and information technology. Day-by-day new technological solutions are advancing business processes in every department of enterprises.
HR software, salesforce software and supply chain software have become the norm for the top enterprises in the world. On top of the desktop applications for such business processes, software is being redesigned for usage on mobile devices. Mobile employees have proven their productivity and value over the past few years.
Simple aspects of corporate life such as identification badges have been ‘app-ified’ using QR codes and geo-spatial features built into smartphones – and today, many corporate campuses use an employee’s smartphone as their sole identification device. Sensors know which doors to unlock depending on organizational roles and are intelligent enough to allow non-accessing members access when in the presence of a superior.
These business intelligence advancements highlight the powerful capabilities already built into our iPhone, Android, and other smart devices. Consumer apps and mobile webpages barely scratch the surface when it comes to the potential efficiency and optimizations possible through mobile device implementations.
Mobile dashboards and analytics capabilities, for instance, can be accessed through intuitive applications designed specifically for non-technical business users. Portable BI applications take full advantage of touch gestures that take interacting with data and performing analysis to the next level. Offline analysis even allows for every employee to be within a fingers reach of all necessary reports and documentation. The world that once required statisticians and database administrators to compile complex reports and discover hidden trends – is no more.
As the business and enterprise community continue to embrace mobile, the strategies employed to integrate real-time, mission-critical processes only highlight the obvious, that mobile is here to stay and will only become more important over time for the business world.