Enterprise Mobility Summit 2014: The 'soul' is missing ingredient of enterprise mobility, claims O2

William Buller likens business challenges with mobility to dialogue from hit US TV show Breaking Bad

The missing ingredient of enterprise mobility is its "soul", according to Telefonica O2's head of smarter working consulting, William Buller.

Buller was speaking at Computing's Enterprise Mobility Summit 2014 at Hilton Tower Bridge today.

He likened the problems of implementing an effective mobility strategy to the hit US TV show Breaking Bad.

In season one of the series, characters Walter White and Gretchen Schwartz question the make-up of a human, White suggesting that something was missing. Schwartz asks "What about the soul?".

Buller's suggestion was that people need to be asked how they would prefer to work, and what information and tools they need.

A business should then ask what device is right for each person, depending on their role, and question whether they can take a proof of concept and do it to scale.

Once employees can see that the mobility strategy is helping them to do their job and enabling them to carry on doing the things they want to, they will buy into such a strategy. The buy-in is effectively the "soul" of enterprise mobility.

According to Buller, another finding from O2's research was that business apps perform well in the office and at home, but nowhere else.

He said that O2's research found that businesses were doing very well to make the home look and feel like an office, paving the way for employees to work from home.

But this effectiveness would decrease significantly for staff required to work at customer or partner locations.

Buller claimed that delivering efficiency through enterprise mobility in these other working environments could provide £30bn in value to UK plc.