When it comes to global mobility, the numbers don’t lie.
And now a recent study of SMBs from Vodafone has revealed that 97% of participants believe that mobility has recently helped them to improve their business, with some even going so far as to say that without enterprise mobility their business would be in jeopardy .
Even if the figures weren’t there however, we can all simply just look around us and see how much the mobile phone has intertwined itself into our everyday lives, so why not in business?
The key signifiers for enterprise mobility being on the rise are clear, and the SMBs that have been agile enough to quickly embrace this shift are already seeing the benefits. But how exactly is enterprise mobility shaping the way SMBs function as a whole? How is this change being powered by Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives? And finally, how can this communication revolution be driven by emerging mobile technologies?
In short, Mobile apps are now becoming tool of choice for SMBs when it comes to things like communication, collaboration and billing. Practically this means that these businesses are able to deploy much more flexibility and manage their workday with tools that they’re already used to.
Looking to quickly spin up a popup or remote workspace? Small businesses are using mobility to do it faster and cheaper. Trying to manage a project workforce that changes locations? Business owners are realising that they have the power to do it in the palm of their hands.
Crucially though in this instance enterprise mobility leans on the fact that lots of SMBs are now relying on apps like Microsoft Teams and Whatsapp for communicating both internally and with their customer base. On top of this, businesses are finding that they can have all the technology they need in one centralized place in the form of a UCaaS solution. After all, not many small, medium or emerging businesses have the capacity or the means to set up complex fixed communications infrastructure, but close to 100% of them have a mobile that they use practically every day outside of business hours.
Running a small business is already complex and costly enough without the added layer of implementing dedicated enterprise hardware and software. This is why organizations across the globe are looking to embrace the use of standard mobile devices which every employee in the company utilizes every single day.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) brings multiple things to the table for companies who are looking to focus on the things that matter. Just a few of the things BYOD initiatives add include:
But with all this being said, the current ways in which most SMBs are utilizing mobile communications are often inefficient, outdated or lack compliance when compared to what is now becoming available.
When we talk about mobility in business, it almost always goes hand in hand with Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC).
Where the original FMC 1.0 gave us basic call forwarding onto a PBX and FMC 2.0 brought PBX functionality in the form of softphone apps, the new era of FMC 3.0 allows direct leveraging on a mobile device’s native dialler.
This newest form of FMC will be the key driver behind a lot of growth in enterprise mobility in the years to come. This is because it has the ability to leverage all of the power of native mobile calling simultaneously and in tandem with the power of a PBX or UC platform.
If you’re a UCaaS provider looking to inject mobility into your platform, you can do exactly that with some FMC enabled SIMs. If you’re a carrier trying to plug into the success of UCaaS, you can use FMC as a gateway to success.
In either case, FMC is giving organizations the ability to keep business as usual by empowering companies to retain the features they love, whilst also ensuring that business will never be the same again.
If you’re a service provider looking to know more about leveraging FMC, get in touch with us today.