The Pain Points of Mobile Computing

Mobile utilization in business has been on the rise for quite some time and today’s business has to stop and confront the issues that come along with it before they become problems. Like any technology that people have come to rely on outside of their job, a business’ first consideration is how to make use of it for business as well. This month, we thought we would take a look at some of the pain points organizations can experience when managing their mobile devices.

Dealing with Security

Mobile devices are everywhere. In fact, over 85 percent of people in the world are now smartphone users. That’s just shy of seven billion people that are currently using smartphone technology. With that level of coverage, it stands to reason that hackers and scammers would try to develop strategies and tools that target these devices. 

In order for any organization to have a mobile strategy that works, they first have to understand what they need to do to confront the situations caused by the scammers and hackers looking to get over on them. This means understanding that each mobile device that has access to your tools is an endpoint and needs to be considered a potential risk. That’s why having a comprehensive mobile device management platform in place is critical if you are going to lean on your staff’s mobile productivity. 

Here are a few things a Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform will provide your organization with:

• Remote management - If each one of the smartphones that your business uses is an endpoint, that means that they need to be monitored and managed just like any other endpoint on your network. The MDM platform does just that. It gives your IT administrator the ability to remotely manage what exposure your work accounts have to employee-owned smartphones.
• Bring Your Own Device - Speaking of employee-owned smartphones, they need access in order to be a productive tool; this means that you need to have a plan for managing all the new devices that your employees bring onto your network. An MDM will help you control a BYOD strategy. Without it, it would be extremely difficult. 
• Work profiles - One of the coolest features that modern mobile management brings to a company is the ability to deploy the applications your employees use in a separate work profile. This does two things: it allows workers to access the work apps they need, but also keeps them separate from the other apps on the device. Users can elect to turn the work profile on and off as they choose. 
• Integrated security - An MDM platform provides several features that help promote secure use of mobile devices. From encryption to features that allow for lost phones to be wiped, having an MDM is a must if you want to secure your business against the use of employee-owned devices.

Dealing With Distraction

One of the major problems with mobile device use in business is the amount of time employees tend to spend on them. They can be such a distraction that productivity wanes and they can even be a safety problem. Several studies of workplace productivity have found that the average employee can waste up to two hours per day fiddling with their phones. That’s about a quarter of the average work week, so considering ways to get your employees off their phones and focusing on their jobs is important. 

This is easier said than done. People are going to use their phones. This is the main reason that businesses have employed mobile device strategies in the first place. Fortunately, you can do some of the following things to get your people to focus more on work and less on their personal devices:

• Provide flexibility - Businesses can provide more flexibility for their employees' work schedules. With so many people working remotely, keeping track of what people are doing all the time is a full-time job. Not a lot of businesses have the time or resources for that. The better option is to provide the flexibility to get work done whenever they can. This may not work for smaller businesses that require their staff to be on seat for support purposes, but for production workers at mid-sized businesses, a flexible work schedule can improve productivity quite a bit.
• Provide feedback - If an employee isn’t living up to the business’ standards, they should know that they are lagging behind. That’s not to say that they should be threatened with termination, but by having a plan to monitor productivity in some way, you can get the metrics needed to improve any member of your workforce’s efforts. 

Mobile devices are here to stay. To learn more about how mobile can work for your business, give the expert IT technicians at Washington Works a call today at 301-571-5040.