At a time of belt tightening and budget cutting across industries, Dexterra argues that investment in mobility technology is now vital for organisations looking to sustain revenues and glean additional efficiencies from their day-to-day business processes. The Dexterra mobility calculator provides simple, demonstrable evidence of these benefits, requesting basic information about an organisation and the way in which it operates, before calculating the percentage by which that organisation can lower costs or increase workforce productivity.
“Despite the bleak economic picture, the fact remains that over the last two years advances in smartphone technology and lower costs for mobile services, combined with the ubiquity of high speed mobile networks have made it possible to affordably equip an entire mobile workforce,” says Michael Liebow, CEO of Dexterra. “2009 will be a big year for business mobility – it is a maturing technology with rapid acceptance, and an economy that will drive people to it. No company would ditch essential tools like email or anti-virus in a downturn economy just to save money. Mobility has now achieved the same status.”
According to Dexterra, mobility doesn’t have to be an expensive and complicated proposition. It does not have to involve replacing ‘legacy’ systems – whether customer relationship management software, accounting solutions or proprietary business systems – or even reinventing internal processes and work habits for employees.
“A winning mobility strategy is task-centric,” explains Liebow. “It is built on the processes already in place and plays to the way employees want to work. Mobility lets people complete the things they need to do every day, as they happen, instead of having to find a place to connect a laptop, disrupt an office worker, or return to the office. Our customers shave time off the workflow, and grow without adding additional administrative personnel or burdening existing staff.”
Dexterra offers medium to large enterprises a broad portfolio of mobile applications built on its mobility platform, Dexterra Concert. Businesses worldwide use Dexterra to manage their mobile workforces and improve efficiency by taking their existing office-based software and turning elements into mobile applications that can be used on the most popular business smartphones.
“Allowing employees to use smartphones to quickly complete business tasks in the field improves efficiency and brings companies closer to customers,” says Liebow. “Equally, whether a business embraces mobility or not, its employees most certainly will, as desirable consumer devices such as Apple iPhone, BlackBerry Storm and T-Mobile G1 become increasingly affordable. Staff are going to start using these devices for work purposes, even if the company has not sanctioned their use, posing management and control issues that could very well puncture network security and disrupt mandatory compliance requirements such as Sarbanes Oxley.”