When considering organization wide changes such as enterprise mobility, it is important to ensure the transition goes as smoothly as possible. Therefore, there are five things that you need to consider when developing an enterprise mobility strategy. These factors include access, SYOD, growth, collaboration and implementation.
Access
When considering an enterprise mobility strategy a company needs to determine who will be accessing the network and the different applications. In addition to upper management, employees, and field personnel you may want to allow vendors and customers to have access to certain elements. Who will have access will help the business to determine security features that will need to be in place as well is the size of the network that will be needed to host the system.
SYOD
Businesses may be familiar with the advantages and frustrations of bring your own device or BYOD. Because of the security and data issues that this type of policy involves, many organizations are considering a new strategy called select your own device or SYOD. With SYOD companies determine what type of mobile devices will be allowed and employees can choose from a list of acceptable devices. This can help make mobile management easier and also makes security measures and forcible. When developing an enterprise mobility strategy, companies need to determine whether they will be initiating a SYOD or BYOD policy.
Growth
Another factor when considering an enterprise mobility strategy is how fast the company will grow. If the reason why the business is looking into an enterprise mobility strategy is because they want to support the rapid growth of their business, then it will need software that can adjust to this rapid expansion. The company does not want to spend the time and money necessary to implement this type of system only to need to change it in five years because it will not support the growth of the business.
Collaboration/Interaction
A factor that needs to be considered when developing an enterprise mobility strategy is how different departments will need to interact with one another and the employees in the field. Will there be a need to access mobile applications off-line as well as online? Will data need to be shared with many different departments and people in multiple locations simultaneously? Will employees from different locations need to be able to collaborate in real time in order to perform specific business functions? Consider these questions when determining how to implement an enterprise mobility strategy for your specific company needs.
Implementation Timeline
The final factor that you will need to consider when developing an enterprise mobility strategy is the implementation timeline. Will the company be looking at initializing this new strategy immediately or implementing it in stages over a specific time period? This can make a difference in how you develop the mobility strategy and what type of system you choose for enterprise mobility. Some software does not work well if it is implemented in stages. If you know this upfront then you will be able to choose a strategy and software that works best for your needs.
The due diligence necessary in creating an enterprise mobility strategy is detail oriented. By doing this work initially however, the company will be able to save time and money in the long run because it will be able to initialize the proper strategy and purchase the right software for their needs. By considering access, devices, growth, collaboration and implementation, the company will be able to determine the size of the network needed to utilize the strategy, the devices that the mobility software will need to support, how employees will interact with it and how quickly you will have this new system up and running.
This post was written by Robert Stanley. Robert Stanley is a content producer at ClickSoftware.com's enterprise mobility strategy, a company which also offers a variety of resources on capacity planning and mobile business apps.
