How Mobile Business Apps Change Themselves and Change the World
Special to PalmInfocenter.com
Technology is our everything. It's changing our lives at an incredible rate. Everything is changing - from fashion to online entertainment, where online casinos like casinochanlogin.net.au and bookmakers stand out. However, we hear more and more about high technology, while not much is heard about the revolution in the world of mobile technology.
Mobile versions of EDMS/ECM solutions completely change the scenarios of working with corporate documents, even at the scale of large companies in the most complex industries. Today we going to talk about how business is changing with EDMS mobility and how digital solutions themselves are changing,
Plenty of Data at Your Fingertips
As the digital revolution helps to reach a new level of efficiency and flexibility, electronic document management systems (EDMS) and enterprise content management (ECM) platforms develop in line with time trends.
And they are finding a large and receptive market: IDC in a 2020 study estimated the average annual growth rate of enterprise data over the next two years at 42.2%.
When apps first appeared on the mobile scene, almost all of them were for personal use: communication, entertainment, learning, banking, or web browsing.
Today, business models are becoming increasingly mobile, and companies need to take on the technology to be able to work anywhere, anytime without being tied to an office.
This can be done through the development of mobile applications that duplicate the capabilities of desktop software in the familiar workplace.
New generations of employees consider remote working as one of the main requirements for employment.
Out of the Office Is the New Normal
According to Gallup, even before the pandemic, 43% of employees in companies in the U.S. at least sometime during the year worked remotely, and this figure is constantly growing. COVID-19 and full or partial isolation mode (depending on the country and region) finally formalized the home or remote office as the norm.
Entire companies are moving to a completely remote or hybrid office today. Employers and employees increasingly agree that schedule flexibility and the ability to change locations during the workday are becoming tangible benefits of working remotely.
However, quality employee engagement can be a challenge for companies with remote employees.
A mobile ECM/EDS platform can be a great solution to this challenge. But only if it can provide employees with the ability to fully participate in workflows through quality collaboration tools to work with the flow of corporate documents.
BYOD and Digital Transformation
With the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets, and computers, many companies have allowed employees to use their personal smartphones to perform work tasks under a concept known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). BYOD is not a new concept, but the rate of adoption is expected to continue to grow.
What's more, according to a report by Research and Markets, the BYOD market will grow at an annual rate of 17% through 2023. To meet the needs of this new workforce, organizations are retooling. Industry analysts have coined a new term for this - "enterprise on the move."
The concept describes how organizations are using IT innovation to automate business processes and concentrate essential business functionality in mobile applications available across the company's workforce.
The Mobile App Checklist
Effective mobile business apps need to be more than just a scaled-down version of the full enterprise software of the desktop version.
Users today want the same functionality, the same user experience, the same responsiveness and performance as office applications through a mobile device.
For mobile ECM solutions, this means providing powerful functionality to streamline tasks such as workflow approvals, project documentation, including work with technical and administrative documentation.
Today's mobile ECM solutions extend local workflow platforms and tools by "bringing" their functionality to the mobile environment.
Many of them are characterized by a simple interface and help users optimize tasks through powerful functionality.
Employees are empowered to modernize and transform their work habits with modern programs that offer real-time convenience and flexibility. One of the most important requirements for mobile ECM solutions is security. The use of networks and firewalls outside the traditional office perimeter is a sore point that many companies face.
When evaluating a mobile ECM solution, choose one that offers secure access to corporate storage. Ensure that documents are accessed seamlessly and securely with unique URLs and/or password-protected and encrypted attachments.
Usability is another critical characteristic that determines the adoption and success of a mobile ECM application. Working online from a phone or tablet should ideally be no different than working with standard software installed in the workplace.
The basic list also includes intuitive interfaces, support for different platforms and devices, ergonomics, high response speed, ensuring maximum ease of searching for necessary data and documents, as well as editing and entering new information.
Everything Can ECM
Mobile ECM/SED solutions have long been used successfully for customer service tasks, such as providing mobile access to account history, service contracts, technical charts, etc. Today, they are used in a growing number of corporate usage scenarios, such as supporting customer service automation tasks in the field.
An important vector of the current development stage of mobile ECM/ED solutions is the ability to scale and integrate with other industrial information systems: ERP, EAM (Enterprise Asset Management Systems), and SMMS (Maintenance Management Systems).
Mobile ECM helps improve the timeliness of access to information and increases the detail and accuracy of reporting because employees can receive information on the spot rather than when they return to the office, which reduces the time lag in moving project work forward.
Also, the mobile ECM/SED solution allows board members or project team leaders to view meeting agendas directly on their iPads or Android tablets, as well as on their smartphones.
They do not have to be in the same room, or even in the same city or country. And all adopted resolutions and agreements can be formally recorded in a document available to the participants of the meeting.
Such a solution also ensures that only authorized persons have access to the documents stored in the repository of the corporate ECM/ED platform.
Facing the User
Further development of business applications of the ECM/EED class is possible through the increase of the speed through the use of different templates for typical tasks of work with the documents. It can be the text of the resolution, remarks at document rejection, etc.
The second vector is the support of group operations, that is, single-type actions for groups of documents. The so-called "suggested actions" can also have a group character - automatic prompts for further steps of work with the document in certain scenarios.
Improvement of mobile EDMS/ECM interfaces is also possible by increasing the options for personalizing the settings according to the tasks of a particular user.
In general, high results in this area today are provided by an approach in which a mobile business tool does not differ in its simplicity and efficiency from ordinary consumer applications installed on the same phone.
The goal is to make it as easy as possible to use a business app without the need for special user training, leveling any sense of "disconnect" between the corporate and everyday user experience.
