“Your mobile device quickly has become the easiest portal into your digital self” – Phil Nickinson.
With mobility becoming an indispensable ingredient for industries of almost all segments and sizes, enterprise mobility management has garnered increased importance. It has turned out to be a prime factor in enhancing business growth, customer satisfaction, employee performance and other significant parameters of today’s business. It includes a variety of components such as mobile devices, wireless networks and other mobile-based services that are a part of business operations.
As its importance increases multi-fold, enterprises are facing challenges that are pain areas hindering the way to a successful business. These enterprise mobility challenges are bound to occur with cutting-edge mobile devices entering the market every other day. But, with innovative brains behind the scenes, there are effective solutions available against each challenge that can escalate the growth of businesses.
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) – Its Importance is Inevitable
Enterprise mobility has time and again, proven its mettle by offering competencies that give real-time information to stakeholders in the desired time. It offers a competitive edge by enhancing productivity and profitability of organizations, maximizing their RoI aligning it well with business objectives. It offers the right equilibrium between the time and cost factor. Prior to EMM, was Mobile Device Management (MDM) but with novel products entering the enterprise, the need for EMM was much needed. This includes not only mobile devices, but it also plugs in other rugged devices, IOT solutions, handheld devices and more.
With all innovative technologies getting involved with enterprise mobility, slowly and steadily, it is carving a niche for itself in coordination with other technology partners. Thanks to enterprise mobility solutions, we have happy employees, happy customers, and a successful business. But, as we all know, there are always two sides of a coin. Along with enterprise mobility, comes its own set of challenges to create a stir. And, till these challenges are not faced with a proper & streamlined plan of action, they will continue to hinder the smooth operations of the enterprise.
“We are no longer in a mobile first world; we are in a mobile only world” – Larry Page
Major Enterprise Mobility Challenges & How to Overcome Them
With today’s mobile devices coming up with exceptional features, the pain areas that they bring along are inevitable and need to be addressed. Following are certain key challenge areas that need to be tackled for a smooth enterprise mobility functioning:
1 - Systems Integration at Enterprise Level
At the enterprise level, there are multiple enterprise mobility solutions that could be implemented. Solutions like CRM, SFA, ERP etc. could be a part of the enterprise solution bunch. What really becomes difficult it to integrate these solutions so that they seamlessly talk to each other in terms of the data that they share and the output that they pass on to relevant stakeholders. Not only that, synchronization of these systems with the multitude of mobile devices and networks is equally important.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
There must be a strong IT partner who can help in establishing a strong communication network between devices, networks, resources and ensure a seamless flow between relevant systems. The solution provider must be experienced enough to manage and monitor the entire flow of information between systems.
2 - Keeping Abreast with Technology
With mobile devices, the mobile-driven technology growing by leaps and bounds, it becomes difficult to stay abreast with the latest happenings in the tech world. With latest advancements like IOT, wearables, cloud computing, beacons coming in in the front row, enterprises need to be fully updated about these innovations. For e.g., just the way beacons in enterprise mobility has been revolutionizing business, there are other technical advancements playing their own role in boosting business.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
To take a step ahead of the technologies, what is needed is an experienced and skilled service provider partner who can assist at each step, in understanding and implementing the latest enterprise mobility management solutions. This would also help in migrating old systems to new ones in less time and cost associated.
3 - Complying with Privacy Norms
With the BYOD concept becoming a popular one and with data privacy becoming a prime matter of concern through the latest standards like EU-GDPR standards, it is very important for enterprises to share information securely and discretely. Since there multiple devices and networks involved, misuse of personal information is easy to crack. That is where sticking to rules and regulations comes into the picture and need to be adhered to.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
The IT department needs to be thoroughly exposed to standards and regulations being followed by the enterprise. There must be a strict control over the entire team of stakeholders on what data is being accessed, shared and utilized.
4 - Distribution of Mobile Apps
Distributing mobile apps to all involved devices, networks and end users is quite complicated since the number of components is more and are increasing day by day. Managing unique identification across devices becomes difficult.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
There are specialized services that skilled IT partners are aware of which deal with managing and distributing apps with ease and security. With proper knowledge and planning of apps and their respective users, mismanagement could be avoided or at least lessened.
5 - Security of Mobile Framework
Most IT segments today, are facing grave security challenges that come across implementing any Enterprise Mobility Solution, especially when it comes to enhancing the utilization of mobile devices in enterprises. It is, therefore, tough for stakeholders to have such constricted security controls that include internal security measures as well as those specially required for implementing this novel technology. Enterprises today do not value the security component the way it should be. Some of them do not set enough budgets for that some, some of them compromise on the service provider. Looking at increasing occurrences of hacking, theft, and attacks, it is imperative to have the right amount of security for the networks, passwords, solutions, and devices.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
The most widespread and safe solution to safeguard a highly secure mobile network in the organization is an Enterprise Mobility Management solution, that has proven its mettle in the industry by assisting in positioning of applications and its updates as well as locking/unlocking of devices, well-defined security measures and its well-defined implementation. With experience, today, IT organizations can now utilize several control measures with numerous levels of security which can include physical network as well as other gears of the network family.
6 - Skill Set of Resources
Technology is expanding swifter than the rate at which resources can attain proficiency in that technology. Mobility is showing its powerful run at a classic pace, but resources are not being able to catch up the training expertise themselves. There is an obvious increase in the arrival of mobile devices, network infrastructure, IoT devices but with almost every human life using it, the level of expertise is not satisfying and hence turns up to be a big challenge for owners who wish to implement enterprise mobility solutions in their enterprise.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
It surely is demanding but can be attended to by certain hands-on steps like selecting the resources who are eager to learn, inspire a lot of contemporary means of education in terms of online courses, training sessions, peer group discussions, and mentorship, look for fresh talent with ground-breaking ideas. These are sure to give you good results if mentored properly and would offer an open work culture endorsing result-oriented method rather than time and money oriented.
7 - Access to Networked Information
With the latest mobile devices and infrastructure like cloud-based networks, Internet of Things and latest smartphones, accessing relevant information and sharing it across is a tough task. There is a constant fear of misuse, attack, theft etc. along with the validity and correctness of information. Providing data access to all on the network is great provided there is an equal amount of security and reliability.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
One of the best ways to access correct information from anywhere in the network is to build secure mobile networks that protect the data along with the device. These mobile web apps make use of user authentication protocols and offer data access only to relevant users. In case of theft or effort to misuse, there are infrequent chances of any type of malfunctioning.
8 - Regular Connect Between Spread-out Teams
Enterprise mobility brings with it the freedom to be geographically spread and even then, stay connected. However sweet and promising this looks like, there is a strong challenge for enterprises to maintain a collaborative spirit between these distant devices and teams. IT leaders need to figure out how best to manage these teams to achieve a perfect output.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
Yes, this is a hard task but with the certain predefined set of reporting actions, it surely becomes a relaxed one. Tell your employees to be in touch through office hours, give them admittance to the latest communication tools so that they are confirmatory in maintaining a communication agenda with the management, have a routine calendar of video / audio conferencing every few days to ensure they feel associated and make employees feel they are very well a part of the entire networked association.
On a Parting Note
Technology will never cease to amaze. The world of mobile technologies will keep proving its increasing worth for enterprises and hence there will be more and more hurdles to face. But it is interesting to see solutions against each challenge and enterprise mobility management solutions having a bright future. The journey of enterprises turning mobile-first is surely worth a watch. Yes, it does require a lot of support and exploration on the part of senior stakeholders and IT staff, which in turn, will do a lot of good to the enterprises.
