As a customer facing employee, I spend my time roughly doing the following: travelling to or from work; travelling to or from customer sites; in meetings; moving between meetings. This is my "business life". Of course, I have time - though never enough - when I am not working, be that in the evening or at weekends. In summary, I am quite transient in terms of my work patterns, hence not at a desk with access to my PC frequently. Like many business people of this generation, email is the way I keep in touch with my colleagues, customers and family and friends. Therefore, anytime access to that email is a significant benefit.
There is an immediate temptation here for many to say "I don't want access to my email all the time. I don't want it interrupting me at inconvenient moments. I don't want to feel like I can be contacted anywhere". The beauty of our mobile email solutions is that this anytime access actually liberates how I work. Think for a moment how many times you have waited for a train, sat in a cab or sat at an airport and could have used that "dead time" more productively?
I use a Windows Mobile Smartphone connected to Exchange Server 2003 to have anytime access to my email, calendar and contacts. The benefits of this are numerous, but here are a few:
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I can undertake email "triage": many of the emails I receive are informational and after a cursory glance, I would typically delete them. I can do this from my smartphone so that when I do get time at my PC, the only emails in my inbox are the ones that require action. I estimate this saves me hours per week.
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I have access to my Outlook calendar, anytime, any place. When I am with a customer or business partner, I don't need to power up my laptop or tell them I will get back to them in order to schedule a meeting. I can check my calendar, enter the appointment and it as it synchronises to the server, it will of course appear in my calendar both when I log on to my PC, but also crucially when others are trying to schedule time with me. I no longer have schedule clashes due to out of sync electronic calendars and paper calendars.
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I have every single contact from Outlook on my smartphone with every detail be that multiple phone numbers, birthdays, anniversaries and more. It's surprising how simple things like checking a contact before arriving at a meeting and knowing it's their birthday can make a change to the meeting!
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These are the fundamental benefits of mobile email for me. When you multiply this across an entire organisation, the benefits grow exponentially. Not only does it make your organisation look more innovative and leading edge when you use this kind of technology, it also makes you more responsive and can become a competitive advantage. Having real time access to email means you can get fast answers when in front of a customer. |
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Nobody ever knows all the answers and having found myself in that situation, I can easily fire off an email during a meeting and get the answer there and then. This level of responsiveness can be the difference between success and failure in the competitive environment we all work in. Having your calendar on hand in full detail means you can always be sure of knowing where you are supposed to be and where you are going to be. Having mobile access to your entire contacts database means you're never fumbling for a number or calling back to the office to find that number.
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Microsoft's own experience of rolling out Windows Mobile Smartphones
In 2002, Microsoft UK rolled out Windows Mobile Smartphone's to around 1500 employees. With a familiar user interface and a mobile Outlook experience, training requirements were almost nil. This shouldn't be underestimated when introducing a new technology as users will always be apprehensive about a change. The adoption of the technology was warmly welcomed.
A word of warning though is that the ROI on a mobile email deployment is not always easy to measure as much of the benefit is intangible. For example, the hours I mentioned that I saved earlier on - I can't put an exact figure on this as it will change week to week depending on where I am working. Similarly, different users use mobile email in different ways and may save more or less time. Whilst this may sound concerning, |
ultimately users are more productive, are more responsive to customers and do feel it's a competitive advantage - all through a secure infrastructure based on Windows 2003 server. Put simply, there is no way we could stop working this way now that we are. In fact, we're now on our second refresh of devices, the user base has grown, and we're using it for much more beyond email.
I personally use my smartphone for Instant Messaging, web browsing, live traffic information, RSS newsfeeds, navigating the London Tube and posting photos to my blog! It's a far cry from 3 years ago when I just had a "phone"!
A common question I hear though is that surely Microsoft has to do this given we encourage others to? Like any business we consider what is best for the productivity of the workforce and we do use our own technology to "walk the talk". With the advent of high speed mobile networks, the desire for employees to use their time more productively whether from home, in the office or elsewhere and mobile device technology that is powerful and affordable this solution is readily available to businesses of all sizes. By harnessing Exchange 2003 and its mobile technology, you can connect that to a wide range of Windows Mobile devices be they Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition. It can dramatically change the responsiveness of an organisation and the flexibility of its workforce. For those organisations who are looking to or have already deployed Exchange 2003, mobility is in the box.
There are of course alternative technology options in the marketplace and the advice I would give is to consider the long term potential of mobility to the business. Mobile email is often the first step to mobilising the workforce but very quickly organisations see the benefit of this and almost immediately begin to think about other systems that would be useful to access on a mobile device. This may be the CRM system, ERP system, a KPI dashboard or for others field data capture application such as those used by Britannia Airlines or KONE lifts.
In summary, I firmly believe that "mobile" is going to become simply a way that organisations work and that the technology to support that way of working will permeate across all types of software in much the same way the Internet as a technology has. We no longer think about connecting to "the Internet" and in the same way I no longer consciously think about working mobile - it's just a normal way of working!
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