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Process excellence critical as mobility leads to flexible work methods

Ben Farrell
July 15, 2014

Getting teams to collaborate effectively is a huge challenge in any organizations. However, more and more businesses find themselves having to respond to increased smartphone and tablet use, a trend that is leading to more individuals working from remote locations. As such, organizations need to adjust their operations to support effective collaboration between teams working from diverse locations and business process management software can help organizations get the job done in this area.

Mobility changing the way people work

A recent CIO report explained that mobility has altered the enterprise landscape to such a degree that the way we look at the concept of work-life balance needs to change. The days of thinking about a 40-hour work week with nights and weekends disconnected from work are gone and, in its place, is a move toward more flexible work patterns that completely alter the landscape of how we think about work-life balance.

Industry expertAjay Kaul told the news source that flexibility is central to emerging concepts of work-life balance and organizations need to adjust.

"The modern concept of work-life balance is focused on offering employees the flexibility to work anywhere, anytime - leaving fewer fixed working hours and more project-driven or service-level deadlines and opportunities for ongoing streams of innovation and communication between team members," Kaul told CIO.

Mobile BPM solutions can play a critical role in delivering this flexibility by enabling process integration between users working on a variety of device types and from diverse locations. Responding to these new work patterns isn't just a matter of being ready for the future, it is a situation in which businesses need to start catching up to employee demands.

Mobile device use already a sweeping trend

Businesses may still be trying to figure out how to respond to mobile device use, but consumers are already embracing the technology. According to Pew Research data indicating mobile device use as of January 2014, approximately 58 percent of adults in the United States have smartphones while 42 percent own tablets. Furthermore, the research organizations found that 67 percent of Americans will check their phones even if it does not ring, vibrate or otherwise alert them of new activity. Approximately 29 percent of those involved in the study said they don't think they can live without their phones.

As people get more dependent on smartphones and tablets businesses need to adjust their BPM principles in light of the device type.

Ben Farrell

Director of Corporate Communications

Ben Farrell