Mobile Devices Increase Productivity

93% of businesses have seen an increase in the productivity of their workforce when using mobile devices out of the office.

The research, by Azzurri Communications, also found that 47% rated the increase as significant or substantial, while 71% believe that they could increase their productivity even further – by using mobile devices and applications more effectively to enhance communications and collaboration between employees on the move.

The Mobile Productivity Survey 2014 – based on research conducted with IT and telecoms leaders at 188 organisations across a range of sectors – also revealed:

• Email, file sharing and accessing customer and company data are the top drivers of mobile productivity today.
• The majority of employees (62%) use their mobile device equally for consuming information AND creating and editing content.
• Organisations are currently focusing on enabling access to corporate content when on the move.
• Unified communications and collaboration tools will be the focus next year – with workflow management, video calls and video conferencing ranking as the top priorities for enabling productivity on mobile devices in 2015 – making video calls is expected to jump from 9th place to 2nd in the space of a year.

The report also identified the following trends:

• 47% of IT leaders expressed that mobile security is a challenge for them.
• When it comes to managing their mobile devices and applications, most organisations are not fully in control. Only 42% of organisations use a Mobile Device Management (MDM) tool, although a further 17% plan to do so.
• The greatest interest in MDM came from the largest organisations, with 21% of organisations with over 1,000 employees and 26% of those with 201 – 1,000 employees planning to deploy it.

“Smartphones and tablets have transformed mobile devices from being for consumption to being used for creation and editing – and so are changing the way we all work,” said Rufus Grig, CTO at Azzurri Communications. “2015 will be the year when IT leaders want to make more from the unified communications and collaboration tools available for mobile devices – particularly as they seek to integrate mobile and remote workers in their business workflows. As connectivity continues to improve, with better 4G and Wi-Fi coverage, we expect to see take-up of these services continue apace.”