Over the last few years, there has been a strong focus on Enterprise Mobility Management. Companies have devoted countless hours and employee brainpower to BYOD, for example, debating whether it was an effective enablement approach or whether they should focus on a different option (one of the multitudes of other acronyms that arose in BYOD’s wake).
This year, I think we’ve gotten past most of those “this or that” hurdles in EMM. Now, what we’re left with are the devices and how we can use them as productivity tools. So, the question for mobile in the enterprise in 2015 is, “Now what?” There are several mobile trends that are really going to take off in 2015, and they all apply to productivity in the workplace.
Enterprise Apps Will Take Off
This year will be huge for enterprise apps — for internal enterprise apps to come online, and for people to start to see productivity gains. Mobile offers a really great excuse for the enterprise to look at its processes and to ask the question, “What makes sense on mobile?” If a company takes its existing processes and tries to cram them into mobile, it’ll just end up with a bad process in a small window.
Going small isn’t the same thing as going mobile, so if companies really focus on making their processes work for mobility, there will be some great leaps forward when it comes to internal enterprise apps. We’ll see this most immediately in processes that require somebody’s response, such as vacation requests, expense reporting and expense management. Data-intensive processes will take longer.
Contextual Applications Abound
This is also the year when contextuality will start to rear its head in the enterprise. In the past, an application didn’t have any understanding of who you were — at least not from a deeply integrated level. It couldn’t, for example, cross-reference your calendar with your geo location and the weather to predict flight delays and missed meetings. In 2015, we’ll see contextual applications in the enterprise start to pop up and this will be another huge productivity gain.
Streams Replace Individual Apps
The streaming notification options for Android and iOS are just the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to the way we work with applications. This year, we’ll be doing our work through apps in a stream-like manner — similar to the way Facebook or Twitter take users to other apps. Relevant work for a given moment is presented in a stream of interconnected apps. Now, actually going into a native app will be left for more in-depth tasks.
The aforementioned mobile operating systems will lead with this streaming idea and we will eventually think about mobility from a stream perspective rather than an app perspective — meaning that people will be working through the stream rather than an individual application. No, the app won’t go away, but the focus will shift to how we work with an app and when in the coming year.
All in One with Mobile and IoT
In 2015, we’ll start to see mobile, the Internet of Things and big data all bleed together. When we think about IoT, we generally think about the refrigerator that orders food for you or the Nest thermostat, but we’re starting to see more partnerships between traditional IoT companies and mobile-focused giants — Apple with IBM and Samsung with SAP, for example. These unions will create much more beyond the connected appliance, and drive increased productivity from a business context.
When I sat down with one of the corporate VPs for Samsung in Berlin a couple months ago, I asked him what this union could look like. He pointed me to Samsung’s air gestures feature and asked me to envision that I was working on an oil-rig out in the Atlantic wearing gloves. If I could do an air gesture over the device and actually enter data and manipulate these connected tools without having to slow down, I now have greater productivity potential. I don’t have to stop. I can just do the gesture over my phone, and it’s off and running.
All of this opens possibilities to leverage certain processes and pull different pieces together. In 2015, the rubber will meet the road. This is where these partnerships can really make IoT interesting to the enterprise. Though, the connected coffee maker is pretty cool, too.
Benjamin Robbins is co-founder of Palador, a Seattle consultancy that focuses on designing and building custom applications.
Image via Can Stock Photo
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