BYO...laptop?

BYOD..."Bring-Your-Own-Device" seems to be the biggest strategy that companies are now trying to master. Employees expect to be able to bring their own mobile phones, laptops and tablets into the office setting without having a "company device" to also manage but having the convenience of using their own device from home. Sure this seems quite convenient, and maybe cuts some costs here and there, but what does this really mean for companies?

We have outlined some new challenges that will come with this policy from The Globe and Mail's article that provides some more insight on how BYOD will change your business:

 Some issues that IT may run into:

- Employees expect the same degree of advanced technology and services integration in the workplace that they already experience in their personal life

- Employees may threaten you "give me the advanced technology that I know I can have, or I will do it myself"

Aberdeen Group found that the top 20% of performers (defined as Best-in-Class organizations):

- provide mobile access to almost all employees

- recover all but 5% of lost or stolen mobile devices
- improved their personal speed of decision-making by 14% over the prior 12 months, 3.5 times the improvement of Industry Average

Is your company in this top 20%?

If your business has not thought about BYOD or even a mobile strategy as a plan for the next coming months, you are sure to face some struggle with the new demands of the "tech savvy" employee.

To find out some more benefits and reasons to Go-Mobile, check out our previous posts on mobility and our event slides from a previous event we held in Waterloo based on building a mobile strategy NOW!

 

Follow @Ideaca

Hang up on the past...dial into mobility NOW!

Last Wednesday evening in Waterloo, Ontario, Ideaca hosted a cocktail event "Mobility...Canada's most overlooked priority & why it is crucial to business success!".

This event focused on the urgent need for Canadian businesses to step up their initiaves in creating a mobile platform for both their employees and for their customers.

Brad Blaskavitch, Sales Director at Ideaca, touched on the many ways a company can develop different mobile strategies to better their customers experience, as well as satisfying the everchanging needs of their employees.

Christa Nesbitt, Sales Director at Ideaca,  also wowed the audience with a few demos showcasing submitting expenses on the go, tracking store productivity and sales in real-time and a virtual tracking program to discover and maintain issues in the field.

If you missed out on this event, it will be hosted again in Fall 2012 in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Stay up-to-date for event details in your city!

Follow @Ideaca

Corporate Mobile Application Strategy

In the March/April edition of Exchange Magazine, Ideaca's Brad Blaskavitch wrote an article around creating a Corporate Mobile Application Strategy for your business.

In this article Brad outlines five essential technology components for a successful mobile strategy:

1. Mobile Devices: Smartphones and new generation tablets are more powerful and capable than ever before, and keep evolving at a rapid rate. Their power allows for more advanced applications. The ability to store data when network connectivity is lost, has been critical to corporate mobile application initiatives.

2. Mobile Applications & Platforms: Previously, organizations delayed investment in mobility for fear of tying themselves to a single hardware vendor, causing paralysis. Today's mobile computing platforms and development tools have advanced to the point that device OS/manufacturer is no longer significantly relevant. Mobile applications can be developed once to run on Android, Apple iOS and Blackberry.

3. Network/Carrier Infrastructure: Wireless telecom companies have made tremendous investments to improve the speeds of data transfer and expand their geographic coverage. We have seen the transition from 2G to 4G networks. These improvements allow mobile applications to have more capability and perform at acceptable speeds.

4. Corporate Technology: Many companies have invested heavily in corporate systems and line of business applications to improve operational efficiencies in administrative functions, systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Financial, Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence. Organizations now have the key internal infrastructure to support a true corporate mobility strategy and extend these capabilities to their mobile workers in an integrated solution.

5. Cloud Computing: While many will argue that it isn't a core requirement, cloud computing has allowed many organizations to scale their technology footprint without incurring the significant capital costs of a more traditional on-premise hardware strategy. The ability to scale up or down the computing power of an organization, eliminating hardware and IT resource constraints, has freed up capital and IT resources to focus on value add solutions to increasing the organizations competitiveness.

For the rest of the article, click the link below to check it out on page 32-33. http://www.exchangemagazine.com/currentissue/ExchangeVol29No4/

Follow @Ideaca