The New Mobile Office Gives a Competitive Edge

In today’s market place, finding a competitive edge is extremely important. One solution rapidly emerging as a competitive edge for both small to medium businesses (SMB) and enterprises is the concept of a mobile office. A mobile office takes the capabilities of the mobile worker (i.e. the ability to reach a worker even if they are not at their desk) to the next level.

Now, not just the worker is mobile — essentially their whole office comes with them. This can be extremely important for individuals who perform multiple roles within their organization and need to shift between those roles quickly, especially in vertical industries such as real estate, insurance, healthcare, and construction.

So what do I mean by “mobile office?” The concept has been around since the 1990s, when laptops came out and workers were able to use them to perform work while out of the office. This work could include creating documents and making presentations or it could be of a more technical nature, such as loading software or making the laptop a piece of test gear.

With the introduction of unified communications during this decade, more office functionality has been incorporated into the mobile office. For instance, voice mail, e-mail, softphones and fax over IP now make it possible (along with a VPN) to replicate most core office functions away from the office.

One of the newest wrinkles is the movement of the mobile office to a different platform. While laptops are still in use, we have hit an inflection point for those devices. The mobile office is now transitioning to smartphones that offer remote e-mail access, Internet access and mp3 player capability, as well as the ability to read e-mail attachments.

While the smartphone screen size and typical lack of full office application software (Microsoft Office, Adobe FrameMaker, etc.) are restricting the widespread acceptance of smartphones as the new mobile office platform, other features such as integrated camera, Wi-Fi, and mobile client software are value-added features propelling it forward. In addition, the compact size of the smartphone and its easy connectivity to the network (vs. Wi-Fi or Ethernet for the laptop) are huge advantages over a laptop.

While enterprise advantages are easy to understand (like remote 24/7 e-mail access and a mobile client that turns the smartphone into an extension on the enterprise PBX), advantages also exist for smaller operations.

One clear example is in the real estate market. Realtors are able to use the camera capabilities of their mobile devices to take pictures of properties, then instantly e-mail the digital photographs to clients or other agents without returning to the office. This saves a considerable amount of time and productivity. The Realtor can stay in the field, moving from one house to the next taking pictures and possibility receiving e-mails or calls in response to the photos they’re sending out.

Another example is in adjusting insurance claims. When processing routine insurance claims, the agent has no critical need for mobile office capabilities. However, during emergencies (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, severe thunder storms, etc.) the smartphone-based mobile office can be a huge benefit, making rapid response from the field possible. An adjuster can take digital pictures at the scene with their smartphone, then e-mail those pictures along with notes back to claim processors in the home office and move on to the next claimant. Claim processing is faster and customer satisfaction is greatly improved. In addition, the adjuster can use the smartphone to make use of GPS navigation and mapping programs.

It will be interesting to see how technology will change mobile office capabilities in the future as device processing power increases and smartphone technology improves.

Keith Bromley is a product marketing manager for NEC Unified Solutions Inc. He joined NEC in 2004 as the product line manager for the UNIVERGE SV7000 VoIP server. Prior to NEC, Keith worked for several national and international telecommunications companies including DSC, Metro-Optix, Cisco Systems and Ericsson, for whom he was industry liaison to several technical standards bodies.