Mobile Enterprise Solutions to Optimize Productivity of Mobile Workforce

Frost: The growing trend of mobile workers in North America is driving the mobile enterprise markets in the region as organizations seek tools and applications that ensure employee productivity while they are outside their physical office settings.

Mobile Enterprise Markets – North America earned revenues of $642.2 million and estimates this to reach $7.4 billion in 2012.

There are 55 million mobile workers in North America, which translates into approximately 45 percent of the total workforce. Service providers are looking to cash in on the lucrative opportunities offered by such a large market to supplement stagnant revenues from wireless voice services.

An out-of-office mobile enterprise solution is pivotal in today’s competitive business environment due to the large on-field/traveling workforce. Mobile enterprise technologies, coupled with robust applications, can help ensure that organizations are able to maximize customer satisfaction at a reduced total cost, thus generating positive revenue and profitability figures.

The mobile office and mobile customer relationship management (CRM)/sales force automation (SFA) applications, in particular, are proving to be highly popular in the mobile enterprises markets.

While mobile office is the fastest growing application segment in the mobile enterprise space, the need to give sales forces access to real-time mission-critical sales, product, and most importantly, customer information is making mobile CRM/SFA applications a competitive requirement in most organizations.

However, there are security concerns surrounding the implementation of mobile enterprise solutions and their integration with existing user authentication systems. For instance, deploying critical applications and information beyond the company firewall and virtual private network (VPN), raises questions about the security of the information when shared across wireless networks.

Service providers must ensure that access to all information transmitted over the network is possible only after clear approval from the company. A mobile VPN technology that is independent of the wireless user and transparent to the enterprise application can offer an impressive, proven solution for providing secure, private access to corporate databases and intranets.

In addition to security, ease of implementation, cost, and scalability while delivering applications over the chosen business model, are key criteria in selecting a mobile enterprise solution.

Customizing mobile enterprise solutions and establishing strategic partnerships with value-added resellers in order to offer timely, robust, end-to-end, vertical solutions to a specific industry and/or function could also prove to be highly beneficial.

In the long term, flexible application platforms, superior customer service, and customized, coherent pricing plans are likely to emerge as key product differentiators,

Mobile Enterprise Markets – North America Publ 20060612