Is Your Content Strategy Empowering Your Mobile Workforce?

Work has shifted from being static to mobile. But the specific device is no longer important: when discussing mobile, content is rightly king. Whether it’s customer records, financial data, employee details or blueprints for the next ‘big idea,’ content can all be classified as intellectual property, and lies at the heart of an organisation’s success.

It used to be simple to manage business content – place it on a server, secure it and give access to employees via a secured endpoint. This model worked fine — until employees started downloading consumer-grade cloud apps.

Sleepless nights ensued for IT as business content was now freely being access and stored on unsecured mobile devices. Attempting to store business content, whether on device or in the cloud, isn’t a new idea, but building out a cohesive mobile content strategy is uncharted ground for many organisations.

When dealing with mobile, organisations need content to be secure, accessible from any device and have a consistent user experience that encourages employee productivity. But what are the key areas to consider when delivering a mobile content strategy? Here are my top five tips:

1. Put content at the centre of your mobility strategy. Regardless of whether you’ve adopted BYOD or CYOD (or one of the other zillion of approaches!) as your mobile strategy – the device is no longer important. The key is being able to seamlessly access content across multiple devices, from laptops to smartphones to tablets and beyond.

2. Make the mind shift from content consumption to content creation. Having access to content is important, but being able to create, view and edit on the fly is a far more powerful proposition for your employees. You can reap significant productivity gains by giving them the correct tools to be mobile workers.

3. Don’t just stop at employees, think customers and partners. The ability to seamlessly share content and collaborate internally should be a priority, and it should also extend to customers and partners. Imagine the cost savings, and not to mention the user frustration that could be avoided by removing legacy file sharing and clunky FTP solutions.

4. One size does not fit all when it comes to security. The trick here is to be able to segment your users and groups – too much security and they feel restricted; not enough and IT starts to get nervous. More important is having one central view of all content, with adjustable policies and controls to mitigate security risks and assist with DLP.

5. Leverage content to drive business processes. Having content in isolation is not the end game. Being able to build custom workflows and leverage custom apps to integrate your content with other business solutions can take employee productivity to the next level.

Anthony Tate is head of product marketing EMEA Box.

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