Are you doing enterprise mobility properly, or just putting email on iPads?
Peter Gothard talks to IT leaders from three very different companies about the benefits a full-on enterprise mobility strategy can deliver
We talk to a lot of CIOs at Computing, and while every IT boss has a mobility strategy of some kind, many still fall short of building the hyper-connected, mobile-working Nirvana that many vendors will showcase at conferences such as MWC.
In an attempt to inspire and inform, we've pulled together companies large and small that are using mobility in ways that make a genuine difference to everyday working practices.
Dean Payne is founder and managing director of physiotherapy start-up Optimum Healthcare Solutions - a company that runs almost entirely on mobile technology.
Using cloud-based clinical management software, its five-member booking team feeds booking information straight to clinicians' mobile devices, removing synchronisation issues entirely. "It's not dependent on any other technology," says Payne.
A cloud file-sharing infrastructure allows employees to share patient notes across the country "without having to resort to post", says Payne.
"Our set-up allows our clients to book in real time, and lets us communicate with each other by chat," he adds. Instant messages can be sent securely to each physiotherapist's screen, allowing these far-flung professionals to work "without feeling isolated".
Telephony is handled by a recent installation of cloud phone offering RingCentral, which replaced an on-premise telephone server that was "incredibly expensive" to run and required an engineer callout after two years. The new solution, says Payne, has delivered a huge cost reduction and a generally more "user friendly" experience.
"For me and my management team, we can put adverts on answering messages, rather than get an engineer for £300 each time we want to do that," says Payne.
The VoIP system's online management portal allows users to create call groups, send messages or transfer calls to mobile (or back to a desk phone) at the touch of a button.
Optimum opted for RingCentral's "Standard" membership and pays £580 a month for 32 phone lines.
The company is currently looking into implementing RingCentral's HD video conferencing solution to further enhance communication between staff and between physiotherapists and clients.
Law firm moves with the times
Martyn Wells, IT director at Midlands-based law firm Wright Hassall, believes the legal sector has a lot to gain by embracing enterprise mobility.
"There has been plenty of commentary about the legal sector being behind the curve in terms of mobile technology adoption," Wells tells Computing. "However, we found our staff, particularly younger trainees and associates, have so far been incredibly enthusiastic about adopting ShoreTel IP telephony and have a healthy appetite for more. It's infectious - even the more ‘traditional' members of staff have quickly seen the benefits of this system as it's so user-friendly."
The ShoreTel solution is a virtualised unified communications (UC) set-up featuring IP480G IP phones that connects 260 lawyers and support staff to clients across the UK.
"For a regional firm like ours, mobile technology allows us to compete nationally," explains Wells.
Before adopting ShoreTel's solution, Wright Hassall was experiencing problems with dropped calls and other connection problems, which Wells says was affecting the firm's ability to provide "a responsive service".
The VoIP system has successfully addressed this. By showing when staff are free and available to talk, it has slashed the time it takes for a lawyer to respond to customers.
"These days, mobility is probably top of any IT manager's priority list as it is such a key driver for change and efficiency," argues Wells.
"We are growing rapidly - we have plans to break into the top 100 group of law firms - and the development of our IT infrastructure, particularly mobility, will help us get there."
Exterminating inefficiency
Anthony Meadows, director of enterprise delivery at Rentokil, says the pest control firm really started to explore the potential of mobile technology after it began to "go Google" in 2008. The move, he says, gave the company the chance to "start to innovate", including creating its own apps.
"With Rentokil a primarily field-based business, it seemed the perfect opportunity to go truly mobile," reflects Meadows.
"If you've got a pest technician out on his work and he gets a call to be somewhere else, people will need to know where he is. So we started using mobile phones to let the office know where people were, but then we also connected technicians to the back end to find out what other customers were around the field worker, and whether they could go to them quicker".
From this PDA-based scheduling system, Rentokil has graduated to a full-on enterprise mobile app strategy that is built on cloud-based mobile app development and management tools from US firm Kony. This has seen the company largely ditch its fleet of ruggedised PDAs in favour of much cheaper Android-based smartphones, although iOS devices are also an option.
The company now has its own app store that serves technicians delivering pest control, cleaning and laundry services at client sites around the world.
"This included drawing together all applications - including mapping - into Google-driven mobile solutions plugged into the back end," Meadows tells Computing.
This transition to what Meadows calls a "melting pot of capability" has greatly assisted the company's international expansion.
"Deploying to mobile in Asia was a huge advantage, both in terms of the cost and [ability to action] incremental rollout," says Meadows.
The strategy's endgame is what Meadows calls "a suite of platforms" to cover all markets and all needs.
Because Meadows notes that the 24,000-strong global workforce at Rentokil aren't afraid of change - commenting that employees "barely pick up" phones these days, eschewing even mobile phones for Google Hangouts.
Whether it's an SME built around mobility, a historically technophobic industry finding an edge or an established firm speeding up and cracking new markets, there's obviously money to be made and resources to be saved by embracing enterprise mobility.