Val Moodley, Senior manager enterprise cloud, MTN Business, gives us her insight into the mobile workforce in this opinion piece:
Until recently, traditional organisations have taken a fairly dim view of the mobile workforce. Many saw the absence of people in seats at the office as a sign that work was not being done. However, global evidence is emerging that the connected, mobile workforce is in fact more productive and more responsive than the traditional office-bound workforce. This presents excellent opportunities for large service organisations and the public sector to embrace the mobile workforce model in order to become more productive and agile, and faster to respond.
Thanks to the mainstreaming of Internet of things technologies, mobile workforces can now measure and monitor complex power, water or transport infrastructures from their mobile devices, wherever they are. Any problems can be flagged and acted on immediately. With enterprise applications hosted securely in a private or hybrid cloud, the mobile workforce is empowered to authorise expenditure, address queries, track project progress and assess trends anywhere, anytime, using cloud-based ERP, project management, CRM or BI or analytics tools. Now, no problem need wait until staff are back at the office after a weekend or their annual leave.
Importantly, a cloud-connected mobile workforce stands to gain from better resource allocation and a reduced duplication of efforts. Consider, for example, mobile enabled health-care systems that allow healthcare professionals to share patient test results, scans and x-rays, so speeding up treatment, improving patient compliance and eliminating a need to duplicate tests. Mobile clinic workers connected to central specialist resources can access high-level diagnostic support without the cost of putting a specialist on the road with travelling clinics.
The key foundation for mobilised workforce is centralised data and applications, and these must be hosted in a secure environment with redundancy built in. In the public sector, this could be driven by an organisation such as SITA, who might centrally manage cloud services and take charge of building a single view of the citizen environment to improve efficiencies and service delivery across the entire public sector. Of course, for any mobile workforce to be productive, you also need high speed mobile connectivity and highly secure networks and data centres.
Another important factor in mobile workforce success is culture. The saying 'culture eats strategy for breakfast' holds true: if managers don't trust the workforce to be productive when not in the office, you have a challenge. But where there is a culture of end results performance management, mobile workforces succeed.
To position the service-based organisation to make optimal use of the potential benefits of the mobile workforce model, however, a number of factors must be carefully considered, and comprehensive strategies prepared to avoid potential pitfalls:
* The costs of mobile workforce connectivity. The organisation should consider the actual amounts of voice and data required to keep the mobile workforce connected, and review the necessary mobile voice and data procurement models and technologies accordingly. Local WiFi networks, VSATs, Global MPLS VPNs or SIP Trunking may prove to be worthwhile investments to support mobile workers depending on the geographic areas in which they work.
* The security of mobile data. When dealing with sensitive organisational data or personal information, the security of the networks and the mobile endpoints themselves has to be assured, and the entire mobile ecosystem must be effectively managed.
* Reliable access to enterprise applications. When a mobile workforce depends on enterprise applications in order to remain productive, the optimal solution is typically private or public cloud-based applications.
To learn more about how MTN Business, now a fully-fledged communications and ICT solutions provider, partners with public and private sector organisations to address the A-Z of mobile workforce optimisation, go here.
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