Understanding User Experience Is Key To Enterprise Mobile Messaging Success

According to CTIA, The Wireless Association, it takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email, but just 90 seconds to respond to a text message.

Today’s workforce needs real-time access to information with seamless collaboration to make business-critical decisions at the point of occurrence. However, many organisations attempt to implement technologies designed to help teams collaborate and communicate, but often employees choose not to adopt them and optimal productivity fails to materialise.

Even if certain apps would boast a high adoption rate among employees, IT departments cannot implement them based solely on their popularity. An app’s security level must be established.

Consequently, organisations are increasingly looking for options for delivering enterprise-grade security with mobile-first capabilities and easy-to-use features. In order to so, however, IT teams must understand the user experience and required functionalities.

Cross-platform

Employees want to communicate and work using apps whose functionality mirrors the ease of their favourite consumer equivalents. They want to be able to own their own preferred methods of communication, engage in one-to-one or group chats, and create topic-based discussions for a specific team.

Ideally, an enterprise communication tool should take into consideration each employee’s preferred contact method to ensure colleagues know the best avenue to reach one another. In addition, this tool should easily allow external communication with outside parties through restricted guest access.

With the rise of the mobile workforce, and proliferation of BYOD, it is now vital that enterprise apps are available on a variety of mobile devices, as well as via a web-based interface for use on a laptop or desktop. This will allow employees to start a conversation on one device and easily continue on another. This is essential for today’s multi-device workforce.

Security standards

Finally, as mentioned above, an enterprise communication app must be secure. Any instance of written communication creates a risk of leaked information falling into the wrong hands.

As such, IT teams must remain vigilant and weary of mobile messaging, especially with the amount of free unsecure apps being used without IT’s authorisation or knowledge. And with constant information going back and forth through apps, data must be encrypted–both at rest and while it is in transit.  Security risks lie as much in the act of information exchange as they do on the storage medium.

Another primary security aspect to consider with any enterprise app is how the stored data is accessed. For this reason, IT should require apps with increased access controls and user authentication, specifically two-factor authentication, data encryption tools, and compliance with data privacy standards (supporting laws of various data protection authorities) and that all Personally Identifiable Information (PII) remains confidential.

‘Seismic shift’ in working patterns

This seismic shift in working patterns has led to employees becoming accustomed to a plethora of information at their fingertips. Today’s enterprises must strive to provide mobile communication apps that feature consummate usability and enterprise-grade security.

Is the only way that IT departments can hit their target levels of adoption whilst also having peace of mind, and delivering a tangible, appreciated benefit to the business. In addition, when employees are comfortable and familiar with an app’s features and capabilities, they are more likely to use it responsibly.

Though employees are now the driving force behind device and connection adoption, IT teams still have a responsibility to ensure the business is protected. As such, enterprises that embrace communication tools with excellent usability, multi-faceted security, and robust real-time connectivity that employees are familiar with will quickly benefit from increased productivity and a contented workforce.

Anne Marie Murray, Global Product Marketing Manager at Tangoe