The traditional CIO role has changed in recent years, thanks in large part to the evolution of mobile technology. As mobile solutions have infiltrated every aspect of a company’s operations, CIOs have moved away from IT-specific oversight to involve themselves in organizational leadership and administration of enterprise business solutions.
Today, CIOs at innovative companies are charged with helping the enterprise leverage mobile technology for greater transformation. Here are three key ways this access to mobility is reshaping day-to-day business operations.
1. Scalable Permissions, Increased Productivity
When mobile devices first entered into business environments, they were seen as a liability, and as a distraction. That’s no longer the case. Even as smartphones and tablets are joined by wearables and other ‘Internet of Things’ solutions, businesses are eager to adopt mobile solutions that streamline operations, make workers more efficient, and increase overall productivity.
For that, you can thank mobile device management solutions, which provide a framework for supporting and securing this mobile ecosystem. With mobile device management, large enterprises can easily manage individual devices to control permissions and data access for every user, as well as authorizing access to cloud-based tools and assets that help workers do their jobs.
This wouldn’t be possible if mobile device management weren’t able to provide a strong security front covering hundreds, even thousands of mobile endpoints. Now, enterprises can adopt mobile hardware with little concern about the possible risks.
2. Work From Anywhere in The World
In the past, remote workers were at a distinct disadvantage. They lacked the software, tools, and resources available in the office, and communication channels were far more limited.
But with enterprise mobility able to reliably protect data while providing software and resources via the cloud, remote workers can access their virtual office from anywhere they have an internet connection.
This gives enterprise organizations the benefits of remote workers — including the ability to make field visits or simply increase worker productivity and morale by offering remote work options — while minimizing the historical limitations of this arrangement.
3. Unprecedented Collaboration
Whether workers are all in the same meeting room or communicating across continents, mobility is reshaping collaboration at the enterprise level. Executives can conduct video conferences in high-definition; administrators can deliver, review, and revise business reports with no time wasted transferring from one hand to the next, thanks to secure channels for exchanging large and sensitive assets; and creative teams can view and edit the same pieces of content simultaneously, as if working in the same room.
Business communication channels like Slack are also enabling group communications more efficiently than ever before, and cloud-based softwares automatically save past conversations and versions of content, so that it’s easy to go back and recover what was lost in the shuffle.
Mobility is not just an IT concern anymore. It affects every aspect of business operations, opening doors to new possibilities from entry-level employees all the way up to the C-suite.
