6 Steps to Determine Which Employees Require Mobility
It's common for organizations to phase their mobility solutions rollouts. But determining who should get access to mobility first is always a challenge, especially in organizations with hundreds of employees. While a thorough study looking at employee needs, processes and applications is the usual approach to making these decisions, there’s a quick way to decide which employees and processes can benefit the most from mobility. This six-step plan will help you gather the information you need to optimize each phase of your rollout, and ensure that those who need mobility most will get early access.
1. Map Your Organization
The goal of this step is to understand where each of your employees is located. Create a list of all of your offices, including headquarters and satellite locations that house permanent employees. You should also identify any employees who work remotely from home. In each location, group workers according to role. It’s a good bet that those in a regional or international office, or in a sales or customer support role, will benefit from mobile solutions. In fact, remote workers will usually be at the top of the list.
2. Pinpoint the Road Warriors
Certain teams, such as sales and field services, spend most of their time on the road visiting customers or prospects. Like remote workers, these employees have a pressing need for mobile solutions. Sales in particular will show a strong return on investment from mobility. For example, studies who that using mobile solutions are likely to see a 35 percent increase in prospect visits and a 25 percent increase in sales while achieving 15 percent lower sales costs.
Executives also tend to be road warriors, frequently working from hotel rooms or airports. For example, when international manufacturing company CHERVON expanded operations in China, it deployed 40 ShoreTel Mobility licenses, primarily to traveling staff and executives, extending VoIP functionality to their smartphones and tablets wherever they were located.
3. Identify Staff For Whom Mobility is an Activity
In the past, the need for mobile has been driven by an employee’s location. But with the wide adoption of tablets, mobility provides significant benefits for workers whose tasks depend on unfettered and unlimited access to critical data. Some staff can realize productivity improvements with mobile apps that help them do their jobs more effectively. For example, healthcare professionals use mobile devices to access critical patient data and consult with colleagues from hallways and lobbies throughout healthcare facilities such as hospitals and physicians’ offices.
4. Find Out Who Brings Their Own Devices
Employees using personal devices for business reasons are prime candidates for mobile solutions. With solutions such as the ShoreTel mobile application, these workers can become more productive by gaining access to all the features of their desk phone, including directory services, one-click access to conferences and a “dual persona” solution that maintains separate identities to track work and personal activities.
5. Uncover Enterprise Application Opportunities
Once you have a clear view of where employees are located, what devices they have and which roles they perform in the organization, evaluate the opportunities for integrating enterprise applications into your phone system. Look for places where productivity can be enhanced and time savings achieved. Employees whose work involves using these applications should be added to the priority list of mobile users.
6. Conduct an Employee Survey
Finally, ask for feedback. A short employee survey can be quickly and easily deployed using off-the-shelf tools. You can even use the survey to collect information that will make the rollout easier, such as BYOD numbers, device preferences and application requirements.
Depending on the size of your business and your rollout team resources, these six steps can usually be completed fairly quickly – in a matter of days or weeks. Although the process may not capture every employee who should have access to a mobile solution, you’ll know immediately which employees will benefit the most.
If you'd like more information on how to operate a mobile organization, contact High Tech Communications today and we'd be pleased to assist you!
