How connected are you to your smartphone?
Often, people are more attached to this device than they would like to admit. However, there are benefits to having your smartphone on you all the time. Ordering takeout is a breeze. Scoping out the traffic report is nearly effortless.
Ideally, business collaboration should be simple – but is this really true?
The Results Speak for Themselves
A report released by Seismic and the Association for Information and Image Management recently looked into how much professionals value internal and external collaboration. AIIM surveyed 464 community members to form the report.
Out of this group, only 16 percent said that their main enterprise content management system is adapted for mobile. About 75 percent of people said they don’t have the ability to edit workflows or documents on their mobile device.
These statistics alone highlight the lack of support from the enterprise in terms of collaboration. Employees may have mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones in their pockets, but they can’t use them on the go to conduct business.
Now the question is – why are companies afraid of going mobile?
The Challenges of BYOD
BYOD, or “Bring Your Own Device,” is a policy that has grown in popularity at businesses around the world. In short, employees are permitted to use their own mobile devices in the workplace or for business matters.
However, BYOD is still viewed with skepticism by companies with concerns about security. For example, allowing employees to access sensitive data on their mobile devices may render it vulnerable. This is one of the many reasons why not all businesses are rushing to make external collaboration via mobile devices the norm.
That being said, the voices of determined professionals are getting louder – the desire for easier mobile collaboration can’t be ignored for much longer. Businesses are going to need to start thinking about crafting BYOD policies and supporting external collaboration as a whole.
But is this really a bad thing?
Companies that make the move to push collaboration measures will undoubtedly benefit in the long run. Employees who have the opportunity to collaborate via tools such as smartphones and tablets will boost productivity. More productivity means additional deals and profit – what business can argue with that?
