What does the future of mobility look like at your company? The opportunity to streamline work by using workflow apps and mobile devices is rapidly being embraced across every industry. But knowing where to start in managing a mobility program may not be as clear. A contextual mobility management platform may be the place to start.
Choosing a mobility management solution isn’t just about adding or removing device functionality. An employees’ context –how they’re using mobility at any given moment and more importantly, what’s going on around them – is equally as important to consider. We’ve found that these cases best indicate if Contextual Mobility Management (CMM) is right for your workforce.
Contextual Mobility Management (CMM):
Is It a Good Fit?
Businesses with Dynamic Workflows
There’s no arguing that the way work gets done today isn’t the same as it was a few years ago. Identifying and then adopting the best practices for mobility can be a daunting challenge.
In reality, most workplaces aren’t static environments. What your employees do on the job can vary throughout the day depending on the field of work. To make your teams’ mobile-enabled workflows more efficient calls for a management solution as dynamic as their situations demand. A one-size-fits-all approach to mobile policy can’t offer that level of flexibility.
While a work app can seem perfectly acceptable for an employee to use in one location or time, there’s a time and place for everything. Maybe you want to ensure employees are focused on the customer and not on their phones. Or perhaps it’s a matter of safety, privacy, or security.
A CMM, contextual mobility management, solution lets you define and enforce policies that adapt to the task at hand. This allows the employee to get the full value out of the mobile device when it is needed while ensuring usage is managed in more risky environments.
When Employees’ Safety Is at Risk
For some, one poorly timed notification is all it takes for a disaster to strike. It can happen on the road, at your warehouse, or on a busy project site. The same simple mobile device distractions that others write off as harmless can be potentially life-threatening for employees when driving or operating heavy machinery.
You shouldn’t need to worry about actively policing the company mobile device policy in these critical moments. It should just work as it’s supposed to, automatically. Reducing or eliminating the risk of avoidable accidents on the job improves the welfare of the employees and the company. In fact, companies that implement contextual mobility management can realize significant savings when used to reduce the instances of distracted driving for the average enterprise fleet.
Technology alone doesn’t make a job more efficient, having it work in the right place, at the right time is the key. So shouldn’t the availability of device apps automatically adjust based on the environment? Making your workplace safer with contextual mobility starts by thinking situationally. Then managing dynamically.
Work Environments With Specific Security Requirements
Mobile devices, equipped with cameras and microphones, may pose a security risk in some situations. Every company has environments where business IP or other confidential data must be protected. Such cases can include on-premises facilities like engineering laboratories or call centers that deal with personal information. Another example is employee access to work apps outside of work hours or when not on premises – a potential security issue if those apps provide access to proprietary data. How do you ensure those apps aren’t accessed when they aren’t supposed to be?
With more traditional management solutions, device functionality and apps identified as a security risk are permanently disabled. While this may be effective at preventing security risks, it also disables the capabilities when used outside of those specific environments, limiting future workflow needs.
To get the most gains offered by mobility, you need a more flexible solution.
CMM, contextual mobility management, lets you automatically, but temporarily, suppress app access and device functionality based on specific criteria set by you, such as location or geofence. Once the employee leaves the specified area, their device access is automatically restored.
Embracing and Enforcing Your Mobility Program
Generating mobility policies that define what devices can be used on the corporate network or what applications must be present and running on mobile devices gets you only so far when it comes to effective management of your mobility program. It’s critical to create policies that take context into consideration – how your employees are using mobility and what’s going on around them at the time. The gap to this approach, however, is often the tools necessary to effectively enforce and manage those policies, ensuring automatic compliance. That’s where CMM can help transform the nature of mobility for a more productive, safe and secure work environment.