Every day brings a new statistic on how many workers don’t work in an office anymore. Seems mobile or virtual employees are pushing 40 percent of the workforce, and there are lots of reasons for that. Yes, working on the road or from home means we miss out on the water cooler conversations, the campus camaraderie and the spontaneity of in-person brainstorming.
But the advantages of mobile work appeal to both employer and employee. For enterprises, it’s about reduced operational expenses, a wider talent pool not bound by geography, and even more productivity. For employees, we gain flexibility, fewer interruptions (if you don’t count letting the dog in and out) and better work/life balance.
This isn’t a trend anymore. It’s a way of life, or rather, a way of work.
Access to Information Is Paramount
No matter where we sit, mobile knowledge workers depend on the raw material of information to produce our “products.” This means access to information is the most important thing we need to get our jobs done. So when you hear talk about mobile print and information mobility, those concepts really roll up under the bigger challenge of overall information access.
Thanks to the Internet and cloud environments, information will always be mobile. As long as you can get to the information you need, whether it’s a remotely printed document or content viewed and engaged via a tool like Digital Alternatives, you can be just as productive anywhere as you are in an office. Maybe even more so.
Creating a Parallel Universe for Mobile Workers
But still, it’s not that simple. As information flows to and from mobile users, the process must happen within the established IT guidelines of the enterprise environment. Your mobile strategy must address all the conditions typically required in an office setting, like analytics, security and document fidelity, to make adoption palatable for a large enterprise. It’s these requirements that bring Next Generation MPS into the picture.
Next Gen MPS caters not only to the static enterprise, but also to a broader customer set that includes the mobile workforce. MPS capabilities like these help enterprises provide a productive environment for remote employees:
- Understanding of digital, paper and mobile document workflows
- Innovation to enable alternatives to paper
- Secure remote and mobile printing capabilities
- Non-disruptive integration and change management
Use these points to guide discussions with MPS providers about your mobile requirements. The work hasn’t changed. How we get it done has, and that’s why mobile workflow and information access must be part of the package delivered by Next Gen MPS providers.
Aligning your virtual workflow is something we do already for many years. Engaging your people in the right virtual way is not, but essential in order to get your results and added-value you want to offer your clients.
Lorenzo Merghart
VP Customer Service
[…] have the right processes and policies in place to support a truly mobile infrastructure. Mobile workers are at a disadvantage if they don’t have easy and secure access to the information they need, […]
The last mile.
I recently worked for a company as one of a couple dozen remote workers. I had access to pretty much all I needed. Except when there were VPN problems. Then it all crashed and I could lose hours of time because there was a problem someplace far beyond my control.
While MPS was not an issue for us, that connectivity problem was a real issue. The VPN was finally rebuilt but until it was, working remote could be difficult and extremely frustrating, especially when we had production deadlines.
OK, I get that a VPN can go down, but for remote workers there must be a backup, even if a bit unwieldy, to keep things moving.
[…] What’s the One Thing Mobile Knowledge Workers Need Most? […]