A MOBILITY WHITE PAPER
PRESENTS
SIX ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
FOR A MODERN
MOBILITY STRATEGY
Enterprises that understand the strategic
importance of mobility are moving to the
head of the pack. With a cohesive mobile
strategy that balances secure content sharing, enhanced collaboration, and a superior
user experience, a company can improve
employee productivity, enhance decision
making, engage with customers more effectively, and ultimately facilitate innovation
across the organization.
The most successful of these forward-leaning
companies gain a competitive advantage
by identifying the unique characteristics of
effective mobile workers and building solutions that give every knowledge worker access to corporate information on any device.
This focus enables anytime, anywhere access
to data in a seamless, secure, and compliant
manner. These businesses are also providing employees with state-of-the-art mobile
apps, giving them the tools they need to get
their jobs done faster and smarter than ever
before. Through a close examination of their
organizations’ core tasks, they are identifying
ways to use mobility to extend and enhance
the impact of critical business processes and
gaining a competitive edge.
Consider the following:
• HelioPower, a renewable energy solutions company, reduced costs by 30%
by replacing its on-premise file servers
with a mobile-optimized collaboration
and document-sharing system.
• Sunbelt Rentals, an equipment and tool
rental company, replaced its paper-based
sales system with a custom mobile app,
leading to a 66% increase in lead-conversion rates and doubling the number of
monthly customer interactions.
• XM Solutions, a print and project management firm, replaced a cumbersome FTP
system with a cloud-based collaboration
solution that enables employees to improve project-completion times by 30%.
In these examples and many others, mobileminded companies are combining mobile access with world-class apps and secure, effective, content collaboration systems to drive the
business and stay ahead of the competition.
They are enjoying the benefits of well-thoughtout mobile strategies built on real-time access
to corporate data, open collaboration, and a
superior user experience.
The Challenges
There’s no question that the time for enterprises to hone their mobile strategies is now.
According to Forrester Research, almost 60%
of corporate employees already share, access,
and manage content outside the office with a
mobile device, and that percentage will only increase.1 In conjunction with their organizations’
business units, IT departments are tasked with
developing comprehensive strategies to maximize mobile collaboration while ensuring the
security and availability of corporate data. This
isn’t an easy task.
1
Forrester Research, “The Rise of Wannabe and Maverick Mobile Workers”
A MOBILITY WHITE PAPER
“Whether you
have users with
tablets, mobile
phones, or Google
Glass, you’re going
to want to build
different experiences that really
suit that user and
enable secure
collaboration.”
Dan O’Leary
Solutions Architect, Box
Security is the top concern regarding mobility among IT leaders today. According to IDG
Enterprise’s 2014 Consumerization of IT in the
Enterprise study released in March, 40% of
respondents said they expect consumerized
technology—including mobile devices and
apps—to have a negative impact on enterprise
security over the next 12 to 18 months. These
security concerns go beyond the risk of mobile device loss or theft; with the explosion of
mobile apps that anyone can download and
immediately begin using for work, many IT
leaders fear they are losing control over the
corporate information that these apps contain. And with the loss of control often comes
a lapse in security.
Concerns beyond security
“When you can grab whatever app you want,
it creates a significant challenge for someone who is managing the IT organization,”
says David Still, vice president of mobile
products at Box. “And the concerns go beyond security to where that content—which
belongs to the company—lives. When someone downloads 20 apps to use for work, the
risk is the distribution of content to platforms
the company has no control over.” For companies in highly regulated industries such as
finance and healthcare, the lack of visibility
into where corporate data resides can have
serious consequences, since federal and industry regulations specify the protection of
certain types of information for privacy and
compliance reasons, backed by hefty fines
and other penalties.
In order to create a mobile-enabled environment that protects corporate data, IT departments need to rethink mobile security and
their traditional beliefs of data protection. “It’s
no longer enough to secure the physical device; it is now necessary to extend the secure
perimeter to apps and content so users are
not tempted to go around IT,” says Michael
Raggo, security evangelist at MobileIron.
The lack of control introduced by mobile
devices and apps in the workplace also
complicates the management of mobile
devices, as IT departments struggle to dis-
tribute, administer, patch, and update the
fragmented operating systems running
on employee devices. And when a company decides to deploy a mobile app for
corporate use, the IT department must go
through the tedious exercise of finding (or
building in-house) an app that can run on
each mobile platform in use.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges to a
successful mobility strategy—and often the
last to be addressed—is the current lack
of interoperability inherent to many apps.
While making corporate data available via
mobile devices represents a huge benefit,
if the mobile apps that employees are using
for work can’t share that data then companies end up hamstringing their employees
and curtailing productivity.
“If your corporate apps aren’t able to communicate with the other apps on the phone,
you’re creating a siloed approach to mobility. If you make changes to data in an app,
instead of in a central, shared repository, you
lose that concept of content following you
around and always staying up to date. Just
punting a document over the walls won’t cut
it,” says Box’s Still.
Focus on user experience
There’s more to the story, however. These
security and management considerations
don’t make a difference if IT departments
aren’t also focused on the user’s mobile experience. Apps must be highly secure, interoperable, and easy to manage, but if they
lack a simple, accessible, task-based interface, they just won’t be used. “The usability and consistency of a mobile experience
is incredibly important. You can invest in a
secure mobile solution, but if it’s too challenging for your employees to navigate, or
if it doesn’t make them more productive on
the go, they’re simply not going to use it,”
notes Grant Shirk, group enterprise product
marketing manager at Box. “People have an
expectation for how a mobile app should
work—nobody wants to sit through an hour
of training on a mobile app. It must be useful
and intuitive from the first touch.”
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Indeed, creating a great user experience is not
only essential to mobility, but to collaboration
overall. “Companies need to start by thinking about the user—who are the users that
this mobility initiative is being built around,
and use that to define how you’re going to
structure collaboration,” says Dominic Grillo,
principal sales engineer at Box. “For instance,
if [you’re] looking at a situation where a company wants to push marketing materials out
to [a] mobile sales team … it’s not just collaboration [among] your sales reps and them
interfacing with the customer, there’s also the
collaboration element of how are we going to
get the marketing materials from the people
who are actually creating the content out to
the sales team—there can’t be any friction
in that process. An important consideration
when talking about content collaboration is
considering where the content is originating
from and not to focus only on the mobile side
of things, but also think about the easiest
pathway to also connect the desktops and
workstations where people are building the
PowerPoints and PDF brochures and make
sure there’s no friction in that process.”
Six Essential Elements of a Mobile Strategy
In order for IT departments to deploy an effective, secure mobile solution that also improves the flexibility and productivity of
end users, it’s important to identify a collaboration platform that can:
Unfetter access
to information
Simplify the user
experience
Enable platform
independence
For a mobile strategy to be truly
Mobile apps must be simple and flex-
A mobile strategy that doesn’t allow for
effective, a content platform must
ible, yet powerful enough to meet users’
sharing corporate information will quickly
offer users anytime, anywhere access
needs. Data access and collaboration apps
create more problems than it solves.
to corporate data. By bringing data to
should allow for high-quality file preview,
Enabling mobile apps to access corporate
more workers, mobility can significant-
offline access, easy-to-use comments,
data from a secure, cloud-based platform
ly improve employee productivity.
in-app content management, and powerful
is essential to keeping information up to
search. Custom and third-party applica-
date and simplifying access.
tions should integrate seamlessly, maintain
a quality user experience, and allow for the
same levels of security and manageability.
Enhance visibility
Tackle specific tasks
Increase security
A mobile strategy must offer clear
insight into how content is managed
and accessed in the enterprise with
centralized security, password/permission management, comprehensive auditing, and reporting.
IT departments must ensure that the
mobile apps they deploy are the ones
employees need most. Whether it’s
to arm salespeople in the field, or to
enhance employees’ ability to collaborate on a project from the road, IT
must collaborate with business leaders and departmental employees to
determine which tasks would benefit
most from mobilization, and devise a
road map accordingly.
Enterprises need to understand and
control where their corporate data is residing. A mobile strategy must include
comprehensive security controls, access
management controls, remote device
management, auditing and reporting,
and backup/disaster recovery capabilities. The content platform should also
integrate with leading enterprise mobility management offerings for security,
administration and compliance features.
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The Mobile Advantage
“It’s no longer
enough to
secure the
physical device;
it is now necessary to extend
the secure
perimeter to
apps and content
so users are not
tempted to go
around IT.”
Michael Raggo
Security Evangelist
MobileIron
Once enterprises establish a cohesive mobility
strategy, they can then begin applying mobile
to their tasks, processes, and strategic goals
to help unearth new opportunities, advantages, and business models. The core value that
mobility offers is increased speed of business
and immediate access to the most current information. By making employees more productive and helping them streamline processes,
companies can significantly improve efficiency.
And by methodically examining every aspect
of the business to determine areas where mobility might add improvement, companies can
bend mobility to their competitive advantage.
“The conversation is moving away from simple
access to mail and documents on a phone, and
towards a discussion around using mobile as a
chance to rethink operational processes, workflows, and do things that only mobile allows,”
says Box’s Shirk. This is an important step in the
mobile journey, because if a company doesn’t
consider how mobile can improve its business,
chances are its competition will.
“Really it’s about the evolution of mobile,”
says Dan O’Leary, solutions architect with Box.
“Whether you have users with tablets, mobile
phones, or Google Glass, you’re going to want
to build different experiences that really suit
that user and enable secure collaboration.”
Box and MobileIron
Any successful enterprise mobility strategy
must allow for access to content, as well as the
ability for employees to manage, share, and
collaborate around information. Box not only
provides content access, but also enables organizations to work with the content—to comment, share, and collaborate. With Box, mobile
workers can access, view, share, and manage
Microsoft® Office files, PDF, images, video, and
more from any device—laptop, iPad, iPhone,
Android, or BlackBerry—giving organizations
and their users freedom of choice and enriching the mobile experience. Box has state-of-
the-art mobile apps designed to fit the way
people work, offering a superior user experience and zero learning curve. Mobile employees can edit or annotate files with one
of Box’s many OneCloud partner apps, and
enterprise IT departments can leverage the
company’s developer tools to build their own
apps on top of Box.
Data security is achieved through a number
of built-in Box features. Visibility, control, and
tools device pinning and usage tracking can
be managed through the administrator console. Passcode locks and remote logout mitigate security risks when an employee loses a
phone or leaves the company. For additional
security, visibility, configuration, and device
management, Box integrates with enterprise
mobility management (EMM) offerings from
leading vendors such as MobileIron.
MobileIron allows IT to secure and manage
apps, content, and devices while providing
employees with a native experience on the devices they prefer. When it comes to enterprise
mobility, separating corporate data from personal data is key. MobileIron containerizes corporate data so files can be securely uploaded,
downloaded, and shared with cloud content
services such as Box. MobileIron also provides
data-loss prevention by enabling IT to establish policies around sharing features such as
copy/paste, open-in, and screenshot, just to
name a few. This includes closed-loop compliance actions that automatically remove enterprise content from a device. MobileIron also
protects corporate data through compliance
monitoring and threat detection, and offers
auto-quarantine functions that can perform
a selective wipe of the corporate data while
leaving the user’s personal data alone.
With MobileIron’s purpose-built EMM platform, organizations can spend less time securing mobile devices and more time focusing on
realizing the transformative business benefits
of mobility.
For more information on Box, visit www.box.com/mobilekit.
For more information on MobileIron, visit www.mobileiron.com.