Today, Smart Phones are everywhere. The wars for the handsets are getting hotter every day with more and more new smart phones hitting the market. New versions of the iPhone, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. No matter what smart phone you choose, they all have a significant benefit to the mobile user, and especially the mobile business professional.
With 3G networks and the upcoming 4G networks, data is moving fast enough to allow web based applications to provide a responsive feel, even when heavy data is moving around. This coming of age for data networks, combined with the cost effective use of data plans are making the use of Smart Phones even more prevalent today than ever. I knew the day had come when my wife and her friends were all sitting around a table, with their iPhones in hand, showing photos of the kids on FaceBook.
Today, Smart Phones are an essential part of doing business. They provide information at your fingertips, allowing business to take place anywhere that a cellular signal is present. In today’s Internet connected, global marketplace, it is essential to be able to respond promptly to requests and this should not mean giving up on family time. Smart Phones have changed the game and unleashed employees from having to wait behind a computer for that one email. Now you can get it on the go, whenever, wherever.
As a wise uncle once said “With great power comes great responsibility”. Nicely said! Giving employees too much power, or too much capability can actually hurt performance. Take the iPhone for example. It offers more than 100,000 different applications that you can download. Many of them are free. With all of these applications, it’s no wonder that we have seen corporate Smart Phones with games like “Mafia Wars” or “Madden Football”. It is important for a business to strike a balance and focus on innovations that provide value to the business. ASA still recommends Blackberries for business since it comes with a full Qwerty keyboard that empowers employees to write nice emails instead of the 1 finger peck on the iPhone. iPhone is perfect for an executive that is mostly monitoring statistics, but it is painful for those that need to type longer emails frequently. One of the many things to think about when deploying a mobile workforce.
Are you thinking about using a smart phone for your business? Let us know how you are using it in the comments below.
