Communications Availability Challenges Giving you the Blues..?
When you travel to conferences and meetings, and when you’re in road warrior mode it’s great to have access to work systems on your mobile devices.
However, none of us look forward to the inevitable nuisance request arriving at 8:00 pm in the middle of your evening, when your co-workers happen to know that you’re still “on line”. It’s hard to disregard that so called “urgent request” that is urgent for someone else, but an inconvenient nuisance for you. I call this a case of the blues that quite frankly we all want to avoid.
The beauty of living in today’s on-the-go, bring-your-own-device society is that you can connect with just about anyone, anywhere, anytime. The downside is that just about anyone can connect with you, anywhere, anytime – and expects to do so.
According to a recent Mobile Workforce Report from enterprise Wi-Fi access firm iPass, a third of mobile enterprise workers never fully disconnect from technology during their during personal time. And 92 percent are happy to have the flexibility in their working practices. There’s increasing concern to ensure that your workforce is not only equipped to be mobile, but is operating optimally.
And for IT, the mobility challenges threaten to derail infrastructure, security and application development plans. This is discussed in the fifth in our video series, Mobility Raises the Expectations of Availability video, featuring George Humphrey and Christian Goffi.
Only one in five mobile workers in the iPass survey said their companies do not have IT security requirements on smartphones or tablets to access work data. Workplace IT departments have very good reasons for their stringent requirements on security and what devices are used to support or connect to their systems. Often times, though, they’ve done a poor job of educating their user base as to why one device is preferred.
And if users don’t adopt IT-driven mobile solutions, you can lose out on the entire infrastructure and software investment. When it comes to mobility and the workforce, one of the biggest actions to undertake is understanding the human element of adopting technology. Check out: Connected Mobile Workers Power Innovation to New Heights.
Ultimately, mobile users really don’t care about what IT needs, they want flexibility.
The moral of the story is to really understand and embrace the power of your customers and the market, as discussed in our 12 Communication Trends White Paper. Your internal and external customers are going to drive what you need to support. That’s an important reality to keep in mind as you roadmap your future needs.Learn more from our video Mobility Raises the Expectation of Availability.
What mobility challenges have you faced with your workforce? Have you mastered the communications availability dilemma?
Diane Royer is senior marketing manager of Avaya Client Services. Her focus is directing thought leadership for Avaya Client Services and integrating services into Avaya solution launches. Diane’s more than 30 years of business experience includes telecommunications marketing, sales and field operations. A native New Yorker, Diane holds a master of business administration from Adelphi University and a bachelor of business administration with honors from Baruch, City University of New York. Follow her on Twitter @ Royer_Edge
