While the age of the desktop was already well and truly over, smartphones are fast becoming the go-to enterprise device to do business. GlobalStats, a research arm of the web analytics company StatCounter, reported in November last year that Android was now the primary OS used by nearly 40% of businesses worldwide, while Windows dropped down to 36.07%.
The significance of this coup underscores the rapid ascendancy of the mobile phone as the enterprise device of choice, especially when one considers that Android OS had a market share of only 2.4% in the enterprise space, just five years back. The trend, therefore, is quite evident.
What brought about this smartphone revolution in enterprises, who only a few years back were struggling to come to grips with the Bring Your Own Device trend? Three factors stand out – people, design and technology. Additionally, as businesses come under continued pressure to do things faster and cheaper, while building a competitive advantage, enterprise mobility is increasingly being seen as a solution to this.
The Global BYOD and Enterprise Mobility Market 2017-2021 report forecasts that the global BYOD and enterprise mobility market will grow at a CAGR of 24.12% during the period. This BYOD trend is being dictated by users who are reacting to the blurring of lines between work and home life. Such devices give workers flexibility and choice, allowing them to work from devices that work best for them.
Apart from the cost savings that companies make, the mobile platform positively affects productivity, eliminating massive inefficiencies in workflows, transaction times, and standard operating procedures. In fact, employees will increasingly become the arbiters when it comes to determining which technologies are 'deployed' in the enterprise, due to this.
For instance, one of our clients, a leading global marketing and media company built a timesheet mobile app for its 10000+ employees spread across various locations and partner companies, using Sonata’s Unified Mobile Platform Halosys. By enabling its employees to fill in time sheets on the go, through their mobile, the company was able to improve compliance, thereby ensuring more accurate billing and payroll.
Recent advances in UI and UX design have meant that using mobile devices for enterprise applications is a breeze. Simplified and streamlined User Interfaces found on both Android and iOS devices empower the employee to handle any task, at any place. E-mail, photo-editing, document writing, file transfers and more such tasks can all be performed from your phone, through the use of mobile apps.
Technologies that empower employees has always driven adoption. Disruptive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are influencing the enterprise mobility wave, giving rise to applications like Digital Assistants/Virtual Personal Assistants, Chatbots, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality, Wi-Fi beacons, motion sensing and recognition, mobile health monitoring and shared mobility. Such technologies have wide applications across industries from financial services, retail, manufacturing, construction, warehousing & logistics, broadcast, publishing, telecom and even agriculture.
Enterprises that will thrive and power forward into the future are the ones that have embraced mobility to reimagine their core functions from customer services to basic operations, and even functions like HR, marketing and sales.
To work towards making their enterprises truly mobile enabled, organizations can benefit from having a robust and scalable enterprise mobility solution that allows for seamless integration and dissemination of data. Our Halosys platform is designed to do just that because it enables you to build, deploy, secure and manage mobile apps, and ensures a reliable way to execute your mobility programs at scale.
Write in to us at [chankey.a@sonata-software.com] to know more.