Are Your Business Mobile Solutions Still Fit for Purpose?

The world of work has undeniably changed. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated that change, but its roots go back 20 years—to the early days of the Internet, to the early days of working from home, and to the rise of mobile data connectivity. Suddenly, people could productively work from almost anywhere, and many people began doing just that.

The problem? As mobile working and remote working has become mainstream, the business mobile solutions that companies deploy to support their mobile working and remote working employees haven’t necessarily always evolved as quickly as the world of work has changed.

The gap between the business mobile solutions that many companies have in place today, and the business mobile solutions that they should have in place is giving rise to problems.

Problems in terms of lost productivity improvements, impaired connectivity, device management, and cyber security.

The good news? There are also opportunities at hand. Improving your business’s mobile solutions can unlock those opportunities.

Let’s take a look.

Connectivity without compromise

Compared to office-based networks and Internet access, mobile working and remote working used to involve compromises. Compromises in terms of bandwidth, speed, and usage limits. Home-based Internet access, or 3G-based mobile access, just weren’t as good as their workplace equivalents.

Today, 4G and 5G connectivity has revolutionised the art of the possible, with ever-increasing speeds, coverage, bandwidth, and usage limits. Forget connecting one device at a time—a laptop, say.

Today’s mobile workers and remote workers can connect multiple devices to their home office or remote networks, and do so without compromise. Laptops, IoT devices, smart watches, webcams, phones, printers, tablets: all seamlessly connected, empowering workers and dramatically transforming mobile worker and remote worker productivity.

It’s simply a better way of working—an enabled way of working.

Better device management

Think about those devices for a moment—those laptops, IoT devices, smart watches, webcams, phones, printers, and tablets. Once, the only devices that could connect to an employer’s corporate networks were the employer’s own devices. But that’s no longer the case.

In today’s modern workplace, BYOD—bring your own device—is commonplace. Some 82% of organizations today have an BYOD programme. Not because it’s fashionable or some modern corporate fad, but because employees are increasingly demanding it, wanting technology choices in terms of operating systems, technology brands, browsers and so on to be their own choices, and not those of their employer.

Apple or Android? Windows or iOS? Edge or Chrome? Dell or Lenovo—or some ‘power user’ brand, aimed at early adopters and high-end users? Such choices matter, both in terms of employee empowerment and user productivity. What’s more, they increasingly matter very much to millennial employees, who factor such freedoms and benefits into their choice of employer.

Managing this diversity need not be difficult. Not with a modern business mobile solution that is designed from the ground up to support it, centrally, and securely. The question: was your existing business mobile solution designed with that objective in mind—or is it a cumbersome afterthought?

Improved cyber security

Cyber security has never been more important, as threats such as ransomware can see businesses literally locked out of their data, and facing one of two unpalatable choices: pay a hefty ransom to criminals, or expensively rebuild corporate systems and data from backups.

Data theft and data breaches are another challenge, with compliance regimes such as GDPR imposing significant financial penalties for breaches.

Yet if cyber security has never been as important, it’s never been as difficult either—and the proliferating numbers of devices on corporate networks don’t help. Nor, or course, does the rise of BYOD.

The solution? Business mobile solutions offering best-in-class security, and a full 24/7/365 managed detection and response service.

Such as the business mobile solution offered by us at Aspire Technology Solutions, which secures your mobile devices with industry-leading tools, managed 24/7/365 by the Aspire Security Operations Centre.

A business mobile solution for today’s mobile and remote workplaces

In short, we think that many businesses would benefit from taking an in-depth look at their existing mobile solution, and comparing what it delivers with what a best-in-class business mobile solution might deliver.

Such as an affordable, customisable, and secure solution from  Aspire Technology Solutions, delivered by us as a single managed service.

Not least because it’s always better to think about and evaluate new technologies in a considered, measured manner—rather than a rush, and soon, many businesses will be in a rush.

Because they will have suddenly—if belatedly—realised that the UK’s decades-old analogue PSTN and ISDN networks are being discontinued in 2025, forcing businesses to go 100% digital, and as it stands today, many of those businesses are far from ready for it.