Making Mobile Working Work

Mobile working
is accelerating.

It's a priority item on the agendas of many CIOs, and is an example of advances in ICT being used for competitive advantage - or just catching up.

Achieving competitive advantage with mobile working, and the information & communication technologies behind it, depends on:

• Being an early adopter on the New Technology Adoption Curve.
• Doing it right.
  

And doing it right depends on taking a systemic approach. In other words, it's not just a technology project, and not just a business project. It's a technology & business & people project. It has a big sociological content.

So, first of all, why is mobile working accelerating?

1. It's being greatly enabled by the advances in telecommunication and human-computer interface (HCI) technologies.
2. It enables a more cost-effective organisation.
3. It facilitates quicker & easier networking.
4. Given the need for business organisations to be increasingly agile, flexible and responsive, it enables better use of the three paramount resources of the Information Age: People, Time and Information.
   
5. It means that people on the go in this Global Village can stay in touch and keep the pot boiling.
   
6. It makes it possible for people to have a better quality of life in being able to work at home and telecommute - thus avoiding the need to drive/train/bus commute into the business centre every day. We can live a rural life if we want to (see photo).
7. Green Thinking and the cost of fuel. We're trying to reduce global warming and minimise carbon emissions and pollution from electrical & electronic devices, and car/plane/train use. Besides, the prices are going up and up at the pumps!
   

So it's evident that mobile working represents a sea-change; a tectonic movement; a paradigm shift in the use of ICT & HCI, in the way people work and live, in business & organisation models that we've been used to, in cost structures, in the ways that customer service & value might be delivered, and even in society itself.

What can be done, therefore, in approaching mobile working in a way that is not techno-centric, but rather takes a broader, systemic approach? How can we do it right?

The first thing to do would be to:

• Flag mobile working as the bigger issue that it is
• Establish a senior-level Mobile Work Group
  of business and IT executives

- to address the opportunities and challenges in mobile working.

The group should (a) seek the big picture, (b) brainstorm, (c) evaluate, and (d) govern & guide. The goal would be to put the organisation on the right footing, in harnessing mobile working and its enabling technologies, so that it works for the business, its people, and its customers.

Here are some ideas for the Group:

• Look at the impact of mobile working on work practices, and evaluate where we are now.
• Consider how present work practices, routines and processes might be guided for added value, better payback and people satisfaction through mobile working technology.
  
• Take a big-picture look at all the technologies impacting mobile working, including video-conferencing, WiMax, 3G and Bluetooth, and the ones coming down the road, such as flexible screens, the Windows Mobile 7 operating system and high speed uplink packet access, with the objective of standardising the mobile infrastructure and avoid infrastructure anarchy.
  
• Evaluate the technologies for innovative ways in which mobile working might be used to deliver better service and value to customers.
• Ditto for cost savings and time savings.
• Identify those areas where selective outsourcing might be considered, so as to delegate infrastructure management to specialists in these areas.
  
• Make explicit the business goals & objectives that need to drive mobile working.
• Get IT people out into the field and/or operating at the coal-face, to get first-hand experience of mobile working by internal customers, collaborating to make it more effective.
• Look at how mobile working might be used in optimising quality of life for people as, for example, with flexible working, shared jobs and home-working.
  
• Assess the risk aspects with mobile working such as malware & viruses, identity theft, data loss, regulatory compliance and social networking.
  
• Consider the Green Issues and impact.
  

No doubt the Mobile Work Group could come up with other if not better ideas as to how the mobile working should be approached in a systemic manner. The above gives us a start.