Customer Survey on Enterprise Mobility (EM) Reveals Escalating Costs to Companies Who Delay Deployment of Enterprise Mobility

• 99% of companies surveyed intend to implement full Enterprise Mobility for all workforce categories
  
• 83% of companies surveyed have not completed the full extension of traditional premises features to enable anytime, anywhere communications and collaboration via cloud and mobile technologies for all workforce participants
• Estimated productivity loss by worker type due to gap in EM deployment is substantial:  $12,493 per knowledge worker, $9,283 per information worker, and $2,993 per service worker
• Document sharing and collaboration, audio conferencing, and mobile clients for smartphones and tablets were the three most important applications for EM to support outside the office

GREENSBORO, N.C., Jan. 21, 2016 -- Webtorials, a leading industry analyst, customer and market research firm, today released its survey-based, State of the Market Report on Enterprise Mobility. Underwritten by Mitel, Webtorials surveyed IT professionals directly involved in the operations, planning, design, and/or implementation of enterprise communications networks at 231 enterprises. To download a copy of the Enterprise Mobility State-of-The-Market Report, please click here.

Enterprise Mobility (EM) is defined as the business practice and its underlying technology that enable employees to work away from their assigned work location using mobile devices and cloud services to perform business tasks. EM applications include, but are not limited to, real time communications (voice, video, text, email, fax) and collaboration (audio/video conferencing, web meetings, desktop sharing). EM can also support other business applications such as sales support, contact center features, and technical field support.

ENTERPRISE MOBILITY - CLEAR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, LIMITED PROGRESS

Although 99% of respondents indicated they plan to implement EM, a key finding is that 83% of the 231 companies surveyed have yet to deploy full EM across their company. Specifically, just 17% of respondent companies had fully deployed EM, 53% had partially implemented EM, and 27% were still in the planning phase.

“Our report shows that enterprise mobility deployments are incomplete at best, and that companies lagging with EM adoption are losing a competitive edge in a quantifiable way," said Larry Hettick, Principal Analyst for Webtorials. "All types of workers are seeking a way to communicate and collaborate as effectively on-the-go as they do in their office. The combination of cloud and mobile technologies is reshaping how this challenge can be addressed as companies seek a path forward."

Webtorials defined three workplace-participant categories: the “knowledge worker” (38%), the “information worker” (36%), and the “service worker” (25%). To determine the organizational value of EM, the analysis quantified how much productivity, in time, was lost without effective EM for each category.

The survey discovered that service workers lost nearly as much productive time due to ineffective mobility support as did information workers - proving that service workers are increasingly dependent on EM. Ineffective EM costs in dollars were even more dramatic given the difference in labor costs by worker category:  potential annual costs were $12,493 for knowledge workers, $9,283 for information workers and $2,993 for service workers. When factoring in the company size and the mix of workers for respondents, the typical responding company is losing about $186,000.00 per week or $36M per year.

"Given the different hardware and software platforms and modes of communication, companies of all sizes continue to look for ways to improve employee collaboration and productivity," said Graham Bevington, EVP & President - Mitel Enterprise Division. “Companies that leverage cloud and mobile technologies to extend traditional communications and collaboration tools to employees on the go can have a profound bottom line impact. The Webtorials report underscores the sizeable category level technology gap Mitel addresses by knitting together the very best of enterprise real-time capabilities with flexible and fast cloud and mobile deployment models."

Media Contact:
Nancy Leonard
Chief Marketing Officer
Webtorials
[email protected]
908-949-3713