What do finance leaders need to know to make mobile-enabled business happen?
Finance leaders are increasingly acting as catalysts for change in their organisations, and many are taking a leading role in digital transformation programmes. As they look at the technologies needed to foster growth, mobile is an area that unquestionably delivers the productivity gains that are the prerequisite for growth. VMWare’s 2015 State of Business Mobility Report shows that businesses that have invested in mobile have seen an average return on investment of 150 percent. But as CFO, how do you go about choosing the best new technology that will unlock real value for your business?
It's worth starting with those who are already delivering success in this area – MPS providers. As mobile devices start to outnumber people and the world became more connected, the way in which we interact with documents is fundamentally changing. Leading MPS providers were among the first to recognise this, moving beyond printer management into developing solutions and services for the digitally-enabled and mobile workforce. Forward-thinking MPS providers are now playing a central role in digital transformation programmes in many businesses.
Why Make the Move to a Mobile-Enabled Business Now?
The requirement for businesses to provide employees with secure ‘anytime, anywhere’ access is becoming urgent as the UK verges on a mobile working tipping point. By 2017, half of organisations will have employees who spend more time working away from the office than at their desk, according to the Lancaster University’s Work Foundation. Their research predicts that this number will rise to over 70 percent by 2020.
Techy-savvy, always-on employees are driving much of this change. In their personal lives, they use smartphones, tablets and even watches to access information, connect with others and respond instantly. They expect no less in their work lives.
For businesses, mobile working has huge potential to improve productivity and efficiency. From implementing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy to providing access to resources across functions and locations, a mobile-enabled business gives you more flexibility to control costs, react faster and compete more effectively.
MPS Customers are Becoming Digital-First Businesses
In our experience, the benefits of being mobile-enabled are only truly realised if you can support workers with automated information flows that are largely unhampered by paper-based workflows. Inevitably, you will have some processes that still require paper but prioritising what mobile workers need is a good way to start the transition towards the paperless office.
There is compelling evidence to show that businesses who are already using MPS are leading the way in moving to digital. According to Quocirca’s 2015 Managed Print Services Landscape Report, 74% of respondents who are already using MPS indicated that they have some paper-free processes and are planning more. This number drops to 57 percent for those that have yet to start using MPS.
There is also a direct correlation between MPS usage and confidence in paper to digital workflow integration – 77 percent of MPS users indicate high confidence levels compared to 56 percent of non-MPS users.
Mobile-Enabled Decision-Making
With mobile applications, finance and accounting professionals gain increased visibility into employee business expenses, with deeper insights into areas such as employee business expenses and spending patterns. Organisations can then take proactive steps to reduce overall spend through faster submission of expense reports, improved policy communication and the adoption of preferred vendor programmes.
For today’s finance leaders, a dashboard on a mobile device can provide a real-time view of income statements, profit analysis, key financial ratios, cash-flow analysis, as well as creditors and debtors. They can also view sales against target and sales by product, total hours billed and resource utilisation, and advertising expenditure – all at a glance.
How can MPS Support a Mobile-Enabled Business?
MPS providers have developed technologies to let staff and visitors print quickly and easily, even from their smartphone, without installing software or calling the IT team. Print can be enabled from anywhere, and from almost any device, without losing formatting, quality or data. Features for secure printing are included and access can be controlled centrally.
But forward-thinking MPS partners can go even further to improve user productivity and business efficiency. For example, by providing solutions for data capture on the move, like electronic forms that can be fed into back office or other line of business applications. Or secure electronic document storage, accessible from any location, so information can be shared easily and dispersed teams can collaborate on projects without relying on third-party cloud storage that may fall short of security or other standards.
The practical application of this not only helps mobile employees to keep on top of their workload but also helps finance and HR teams manage employee activities and costs. Examples from this Talent Management article illustrate how being mobile-enabled gives finance teams better visibility of travel and expenses costs in order to process them within the required time periods as well as spot trends and opportunities for cost reduction. For HR, faster approval of timesheets and absence requests can lead to a smoother payroll process and fewer errors.
So finance leaders facing this challenge can take heart that proactive and experienced partners are enabling mobile business securely and as part of an integrated MPS strategy that supports your wider business goals.
Takeaways
- Businesses need to become mobile-enabled now to meet the needs of their employees and compete effectively.
- Mobile working requires digitised information and automated processes uninterrupted by paper to improve productivity, efficiency and profitability.
- MPS users feel more confident about digitising workflows for mobile and MPS providers are playing a key role in helping them achieve this.