In all honesty, the world was not ready for a pandemic. Right from infrastructural lapses to restrictions on travel, social distancing to complete closure in some countries, the world somehow managed to thrive and sail through the tough times. In this article, we will have a look at how enterprise mobility can help in combating the future unseen crisis.
The impact of the pandemic
Clearly, the conventional means of operating businesses were not going to help in making it through the pandemic. Businesses were completely shifted to the ‘online/remote’ style of operation and rightly so. This helped enterprises stay afloat and employees could continue working from home.
While for some enterprises the transition was smooth and hurdle-free, it was a complete overhaul for the traditional businesses that depended on on-premise technology to move the operations online. And this is just about the businesses that could work with the remote working model.
The education sector was one of the first to go online and schools equipped with student devices had it easier than the ones that didn’t. But several other business types from manufacturing to logistics to retail and healthcare where the frontline employees needed to be present in order to accomplish the tasks and keep the businesses running came to a complete standstill.
And this highlighted the importance of enterprise mobility and how it can help in surviving this pandemic and any other unseen crisis that may arise in the future.
Workplace mobility and remote working
With enterprise mobility, employees can be location-independent. This means they can work from anywhere in the world without the productivity or engagement being undeterred, thanks to the appropriate device provisioning with business resources that your employees need access to.
Enterprise mobility also paves way for increased employee availability, saves time that would otherwise be wasted in commuting to and from work, and acts as an incentive to employees who’d prefer to have the flexibility to work from anywhere. Moreover, when jobs are no longer bound by physical boundaries, companies can hire the best talent from anywhere in the world.
Enterprise mobility is not just about empowering your employees with mobile devices that can be used for working, but it is also about maintaining the same level of security and control over the critical corporate data outside of the security blanket of the enterprise. The enterprise devices will be connected to unknown networks (often shared and/or public) or the employees might be using their personal devices for work. Enterprise mobility when well-strategized encompasses all such needs and challenges that might arise from remote working and has trustworthy solutions for each.
Cloud platforms and mobile apps
Conventionally, enterprises depended on legacy devices, particularly PCs that were secure and managed only within the corporate network. With remote working, managing these legacy PCs over VPN was not possible, which led to upgrading to the latest systems and devices that worked well over the air. The cloud-based solutions and AI-powered apps followed suit and now not just businesses, but schools and other industries also depend on cloud-based platforms for operations, troubleshooting, services, and support.
Automated chatbots powered by AI, for example, are rapidly replacing customer support and are now an integral part of customer service. Remote troubleshooting and maintenance over the air using cloud-based solutions for ITSM like JIRA for instance are rapidly becoming popular even in the conventional business models.
Mobility for healthcare
Of course in a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare sector was overwhelmingly burdened. The healthcare industry has to ensure that immediate services are provided to the COVID-19 patients while also ensuring that patients suffering through other diseases, or in the need of prenatal and antenatal care along with the ones undergoing treatment for chronic ailments are serviced. Telehealth, powered with a combination of mobile devices and healthcare apps has been incremental in sustainably distributing the healthcare load in particular geography while also ensuring the non-COVID patients as well as healthcare providers are protected from the risk of infection.
Mobility in healthcare has clearly carved the way for future healthcare operations and will be immensely helpful in minimizing clinic visits.
Conclusion…
The emergency created by COVID-19 was unprecedented, but it has been a lesson for the world to be prepared for any unseen crisis in the future and thankfully, enterprise mobility can help in doing so. With the right set of devices, a strong enterprise mobility strategy, and an enterprise mobility management system, the world can combat or at least deflate the challenges of the future.
