The Mobile Enterprise in 2020

Name: Towner Communications
Price range: $$

The concept of work is no longer limited to a single physical location. New mobile technology has allowed companies to reinvent how they do business, bringing teams together from across the world. However, this new tech presents a unique challenge for enterprise businesses—how they can provide the simplicity of personal devices with the full capabilities of a professional system.

We talked to several mobility influencers about this technology evolution for our new eBook Mobile Enterprise in 2020, and brought these insights to our CMO Wes Durow for additional analysis. Durow himself comes from over 18 years in the telecom business, and is convinced that the mobile enterprise idea is rapidly changing the workplace dynamic.

Business must now “flip the equation, and start designing from the experience outside of the office going back in,” Durow said. “You correspond to how the applications need to work, how access to company directories need to work, and the importance of tools like presence and collaboration.

Why Mobility Flips the Equation

The mobile enterprise concept changes how businesses must make internal and external decisions. The context behind the decisions can be derived from the speed and simplicity of mobile devices, combined with advanced analytics.

Angela Russell-Rekika, a Global Telco Solution executive at IBM, notes that this new context should drive all business decisions.

“Whether the goal is to obtain an asset, use a service, or find a buyer, geographic and other contextual attributes play a huge role in the speed, cost, and quality of the response,” Russell-Rekika said.

“When combined with advanced analytics – descriptive, predictive, prescriptive or cognitive – mobility provides the flexibility and timeliness needed to empower employees, suppliers and customers.”

How Mobility Flips the Equation

Businesses must model their internal mobility applications and tools alongside the external experience. At Towner Communications, the focus is on speed and simplicity. Durow notes that “great technology is only great if it’s easy to use, simple to manage and affordable to deploy.”

“Customers aren’t going to have closed ecosystems,” Durow added. “They’re going to have blended and mixed endpoint environments. We realize that skills-based routing shouldn’t just be for your contact center.”

By switching focus to the outside experience, businesses can ensure a better experience across the entire equation and secure data more effectively.

Tsahi Levent-levi, founder of BlogGeek.me, also noted that this new equation has a dramatic effect on the relationships businesses have with their customers.

“Mobile has huge implications on how businesses can increase the relationship they have with their customers, personalize and make it more intimate and close,” Levent-levi said.

How Businesses Can Start Flipping the Equation

Durow notes that whoever can effectively bring speed and simplicity to their customers will win in this mobile enterprise challenge.

“Build a seamless, intuitive world where tools and applications become as one—everything from presence, click-to-connect for video and voice, to file collaboration,” Durow added.

Durow continues, “They should be in your application and environment of choice in a way that’s intuitive, easy to manage, and easy to deploy. It should have the simplicity of your personal device with the capability of the professional tools you’re used to having.”

However, Durow also notes the mobility can serve to broaden the talent pool beyond the organization’s physical location.

“I think talent can be found anywhere,” Durow said. “Talent trumps location every single day. With that as a premise, the ability to leverage cloud and mobile technologies as the world’s communication flattens will allow you to have employees spread across the planet.”