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In the era of mobility, devices such as smartphones or tablets are the new desktop for workers. The question is how to leverage the growing number of mobile solutions to achieve better business results.
Recently, I was in an airport talking to a colleague. Suddenly, my smartphone received a message with a file whose content was of interest to both of us. I asked whether he had received it, and he replied no. So I decided to share it and sent it to him right away. Immediately, it happened that although my colleague received the file I had sent and was willing to read it, my phone received a message from his voice mail, warning that it was impossible to contact the recipient because he was out of the office. I remember telling him that it did not seem logical that he had placed the automatic warning while he was fully capable of answering his messages. “It’s something I do without a second thought, every time I know I’ll be away for a few days from my office,” he said.
This anecdote does nothing more than note the vertiginous manner in which mobility is transforming the way we work. There is hardly an executive who does not have a mobile device: the penetration of smartphones in Latin America is growing by the day. A trend confirmed by large consulting firms, such as IDC, which recently said that 2011 will be the year of record sales of smartphones in the region, with 34 million units, a figure that will grow to 100 million annually by 2014. On the other hand, the Internet is today a daily reality for workers, and wireless accesses or access provided by telephone companies are available almost everywhere.
We should clarify that “out of office” messages appeared in the ’90s, when email rested on a PC located in an office. At that time, it was very clear and distinct when a person was “in his office” and when he was “out of office.” Times have changed, and today the work of a good part of a company’s employees is to be with clients, traveling around the world, negotiating with a partner, giving a press conference … many roles that executives previously could play in their “physical” offices can today be performed anytime, anywhere.
To make this possible, we should mention a second phenomenon that grows in the same proportion of devices: the availability of mobile solutions. Can a sales rep issue a purchase order at the customer’s home without having to return to the office, and check the product ordered in the store? Yes, he can. Likewise, a top executive approves a budget during a trip, or the responsible for the operations of a plant monitors the status of equipment from his home.
It was imaginable that he could post his travel expenses at the same time and place where he incurs them, capturing the images of his receipts? Similarly, a doctor can bring along the complete history of his patients, including tests results, drugs prescribed, and statistics of vital signs monitoring, whether he is at the office, making the round of hospitals or consulting with lawmakers.
Contrary to what happened throughout history with other emerging technologies, mobility has an advantage: The culture of use needs not to be “pushed” to users; on the contrary, users who use these devices in their daily lives incorporate them as an additional function to activities related to the company. We could also say that the new generations are “naturally” mobile.
From the standpoint of the benefits that mobility brings to a company, you can highlight some data provided by the consulting firm Yankee Group, indicating that the use of the Sybase Mobile Sales application for SAP customer relationship management accelerates the time of sale in the field about 29%, increases the rate of customer acquisition by 27%, and reduces the sales cycle by 24%. This is just an example; each application reviewed will reveal equally positive results.
Maybe, in this new era of mobility, the time has come to put the following automated message to respond in our voice mail: “I’m out of the office. … However, that does not mean I cannot answer immediately!”
Rodolpho Cardenuto is president at SAP America and the Caribbean.
