United Kingdom
Smartphones and iPads – An opportunity or a threat to UK businesses? - Peter Chadha
Traditionally, IT departments “lock-down” and control how staff use mobile phones and computers. However, this control is being rapidly eroded, because today, smartphones can access corporate email and wireless networks with (or sometimes without) the consent of IT directors and managers.
With employees wanting to use the latest technology but not wanting to carry multiple devices, smartphones now offer a genuine alternative to the traditional laptop and mobile phone. And with budgets tight, and firms delaying the replacement cycle for more traditional equipment, relatively inexpensive smartphones may work for both employers and employees.
In January 2010, Apple unveiled its much awaited Apple iPad, promising a 10 hour battery life and an unexpectedly affordable price of around £350. It made front page new around the world, as did Google’s new smartphone, the Nexus One; competing with devices such as Apple’s iPhone, Blackberry’s, Windows mobile and the Palm Pré.
The availability of cheap downloadable applications for smartphones means they are fast becoming pervasive and compelling at all business levels. Apple’s online store now has over 140,000 applications and has recently achieved the milestone of its 3 billionth (3,000,000,000!) download!
Rapidly rising sales (at some 30%+ pa) mean that these business changing devices cannot be ignored.
What’s the impact UK businesses?
This proliferation raises several new and important business issues. For example:
- Corporate data - These new devices can store vast amounts of information in their internal memory, and send it over the internet. This represents a significant security risk. To put the storage capabilities into perspective, even a standard smartphone could store all of a typical mid-size business’ financial and customer data and a good chunk of their email system as well.
- Reputation - As portable devices, smartphones are not secured, typically not password protected and are easy to steal. Therefore they are ideal for industrial espionage or for malicious use. For example, defamatory remarks on Linkedin or Twitter could easily be published, on say an iPhone left lying around in a meeting.
- Productivity - Most importantly, there is the potential impact on productivity as people could spend significant time using social networking applications such as Facebook. This is a tricky area for a business to manage as people nowadays extend their social life into the working day. Conversely of course, few people would take the time to fire up a laptop during social activities outside office hours, particularly when on-the-move, to check for emails, whereas, for better or for worse, this would not be unusual for a smartphone user.
So what can businesses do about it?
For many fast paced UK businesses, a prohibitive and prescriptive stance by an IT department outlawing such devices will simply not work. It is unlikely to be enforceable, will cause discontent and may stop the business from gaining the benefits of people working flexibly out of hours and using of social networking to business advantage
Instead, UK businesses may be better advised to review their IT strategies and set policies and controls to embrace the intelligent use of such devices, for example, covering good practices in the use of passwords and security or indeed rolling-out their own smartphone technology. For many businesses this technology could present an opportunity reinvent their working practices and steal a march on the competition. Perhaps using mobile instant messaging to increase productivity in a mobile workforce (potentially more effective than email), or using a relatively inexpensive set of iPad’s to make presentations smarter and more interactive by allowing an audience to provide instantaneous feedback.
The technology is here to stay and like it or not, businesses will need to grasp the nettle of accepting it sooner or later. Those that are prepared to look at the possibilities and the opportunities are likely to reap real benefits, whilst the less flexible play catch up.
BDO’s Technology Consulting has advised a number of clients on their IT strategy and how to leverage and control this smartphone technology. If you would like more information on this subject, or for any advice, please contact Peter Chadha, Partner, BDO.