Digital technologies have redefined how we interact with the world around us, both in personal as well as professional life.
The “mobile” way of doing things has introduced a new era and a new digital touch-point which has made “omnipresent” connectivity a reality. The invasion of smart phones/tablets in our lives has given the world a new phenomenon i.e. being “connected” anytime, anywhere.
Whether you are travelling to office or on vacation, people tend to stay abreast of all that’s happening around them using their smart phones. We all know how mobility has already made significant inroads in the B2C space. As per statista.com, the number of apps available on the app stores across Android and iOS combined has reached a staggering 3.1 Million as of July 2015.
We are no longer restricted to just desktops at the workplace or laptops at home. People are making use of their commuting time to text, email, take calls and accomplish tasks. Work begins long before we actually reach office, and ends much after we leave. Availability of Wi-Fi is fast becoming an essential list of service desired by the travellers and is one of the top ASKs being looked for in local coffee shops, hotels or even while travelling. A lot of business travellers aim to utilize the flight times to do as much work as they can rather than just spending the time catching up on sleep or watching movies.
This, however, raises an interesting question – Are we doing more work? Are we more productive?
Business and IT leaders consistently rank mobility as one of their highest priorities. As per VMWare 2015 Business Mobility Report, more than three quarters of the organizations surveyed (~1200 CIOs) are striving for productivity and business process improvements by undertaking business mobility initiatives. Those surveyed say their business mobility investments are averaging 150 percent ROI. Compared to surveyed organizations that have not executed business mobility, surveyed companies that have implemented a business mobility strategy are seeing at least 2x ROI.
Thus, there seems to be some validity in hypothesis that mobility has helped improve productivity among the workforce.
However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in achieving greater returns from the digital investments. As per the VMWare 2015 Business Mobility Report, only about 22% were in a mature stage whereas 41% of the companies were still at an early stage of business mobility.
Each of us would need to develop our own strategy to embark on this journey and customize based on and leverage the experience of each other. We definitely would have to go down this path to keep ourselves more competitive and more successful. Let us begin!
