Do you feel as if your company is missing out on the advantages of mobile technology?
According to a recent study, that’s a common sentiment among business leaders. Many companies believe in mobile technology’s value, but they don’t know how to measure it, and they aren’t sure they’re getting all the value they should. And that’s just one of the many barriers to mobile adoption that are typical in most organizations.
The study, Transformation of Work, conducted by Ryerson University, focusses on Canadian businesses. But the issues hindering adoption of mobile technology are universal. For example, in a 2014 survey by Accenture of 1,500 executives in 14 countries, 85% said they didn’t have the metrics to measure the success of their mobile initiatives.
The Ryerson study integrates several research studies with interviews with experts and key informants in a wide range of industry sectors. The study identified numerous areas in which mobile is having “demonstrable impact”:
- improved anytime/anyplace access to information.
- time efficiency.
- improved communications among employees.
- improved collaboration among employees.
- process improvement.
- improved employee engagement and satisfaction.
- reduced costs.
- reduced physical infrastructure requirements.
These benefits are surely why most companies are already using mobile in some form, and why 71% of respondents in a recent survey of Canadian businesses said that making increased use of mobile is a priority.
But development of enterprise-wide mobile strategies remains elusive in many organizations. The study found that while companies understand the strategic importance of mobile, they are struggling to overcome challenges such as:
- unclear value proposition of technology.
- cost of implementation.
- unclear and fragmented policies and procedures.
- privacy and security.
- integration with legacy systems and services.
- weaknesses in infrastructure.
- technology reliability.
Everyone who’s paying attention can see the transformative power of mobile and the high value it can provide, but mobile’s newness and ongoing evolution make it virtually impossible to determine the full value of mobile investments. And how do you go about getting all that value once you’ve made the investment?
Faced with uncertain answers to these questions, an easy response is to do nothing. But that’s a mistake— to delay the implementation of mobile strategies it to delay opportunity. That’s true across a business’s operations, including its inspecting processes.
Grab the Opportunity to Get More Value from Inspections
A safety inspection, audit, or assessment is a process, and like most other business processes, it can benefit from all the advantages of mobile we listed above. Yet, without question, all the barriers also apply.
But if you’re not already using mobile technology in your company’s inspecting, ask yourself: Are we going to wait for the extent of the value to be exactly measurable—even though there’s clearly much value? Are we going to shy away from the challenges, and therefore miss the boat on the advantages to be gained?
Actually, the challenges are decreasing as technology improves. For example, gone are the days when the only mobile inspection option was software produced by software companies. That early software was full of bells and whistles, but it was impractical and too generic. Today, you can get mobile inspection solutions such as The Checker Software, designed by inspection experts for the sole purpose of putting the advantages of mobile to use in inspecting processes.
Barriers to adoption unquestionably remain, but it’s getting harder to justify a delay in moving toward mobile solutions. The maturity of your enterprise’s overall thinking about mobile will determine how difficult it will be to gain support for moving your inspections, audits, and assessments into the mobile age, but it’s an effort worth making, however challenging it is.
Takeaway
As the Transformation of Work study reveals, businesses stand to benefit considerably if they can integrate mobile technology into operations, and inspecting is a clear example of a business operation with much to gain.
Image courtesy of Vernon Chan, Creative Commons.
