Mobile devices can boost business productivity

New research from Azzurri has underlined the fact that equipping your staff with mobiles so they can work on the go makes for a more productive workforce -- but there's still the potential to eke out more productivity from mobile devices.

At least according to the Mobile Productivity Survey 2014, which surveyed IT and telecoms leaders at 188 firms over a number of industries. It found 93 percent of respondents said that they'd experienced an increase in productivity due to staff using mobiles away from the office, with 47 percent claiming that the boost in question was a substantial one.

However, 71 percent believed there are still further productivity gains to be had from mobile services.

The most popular activities for staff on the move are using their mobile to email, share files, and access company (and customer) data. Most employees – 62 percent to be precise -- use their mobile for both consuming and creating content.

So, right now most companies are concentrating on enabling mobile access to business data (file sharing, CRM data and so forth), but according to the report, the focus next year will be on unified communications, and making progress in terms of video conferencing and workflow management. As far as the list of top priorities for enabling productivity on mobile devices goes, making video calls is expected to leap from ninth place this year to second in 2015.

When it came to rating how different apps affected staff productivity right now, the IT leaders scored video conferencing at 2.9 out of 5 on average, with CRM at 3.5. File sharing and access to company data hit 3.9, whereas email was found to be by far the most vital app required scoring 4.7 out of 5.

Rufus Grig, CTO at Azzurri Communications, said: "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. The form factor shift towards devices with larger screens is enabling more meaningful work to be performed. Mobile productivity suites allowing proper editing of documents have made this a reality".

"Very importantly, these devices must be made secure, given the data and files that are now residing on millions of devices 'at large'".

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