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A host of benefits that would accrue to the enterprises on going wireless is tremendous. As corporate work-force becomes increasingly mobile, the need for an enterprise to deploy wireless solution to enable this workforce is increasing. The need for seamless access to corporate information and application through high-speed wireless links is becoming the need of the hour. All these have been possible due to great strides in Wireless LAN technologies and the explosive growth of mobile services in India. Enterprises across all verticals are realizing the importance of wireless in a big way. A clear cut RoI is emerging and the decision makers in the enterprises are seeing the benefits of going wireless.
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Calculating Productivity
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Net Relative Increase in Productivity: P
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For example, assume a typical 40-hour work week and a time saving of 1 hour a day of the mobile employee's time and 1 hour a day of another employee he or she works with.
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Then P=5(1+1)/40=0.25 or P=0.25
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Hours per quarter: H
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Let H be the employee hours per quarter per organization.
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Assuming, 3 months of 4 weeks, each with 40 employee hours, we have H=480 hours per quarter
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Extra Hours Gained in Q quarters: QPH
Source: Infosys
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According to a study, senior executives on an average spend one-third of their time outside the office and so they need access to corporate information from wherever they are. Another study by IDC says that the global mobile workforce is expected to grow by more than 20% by 2009. This, according to IDC, translates to 878 mn mobile workers working from laptops, handhelds and mobile by 2009. According to Yankee Group, approximately 55% of US businesses will deploy a wireless wide-area data solution by mid-2006.
According to a Canadian research firm Ipsos-Reid1, the median value of time regained from downtime to productive time each connected mobile employee each day is 47 minutes. It is also predicted that the time an employee will gain each day will increases from 60 to 95 minutes over the next 4 years. According to another study, about a saving of 5-6 hours per week can be expected from handheld and IM applications.
Access to Corporate Information
The main benefit of an enterprise going wireless is the ability of its employees to move freely between offices and field while seamlessly accessing the corporate network. So this real time information access enabled by the implementation of the wireless infrastructure would go a long way in increasing the employee productivity. So, irrespective of where employees are, they are connected. The only thing they need is connectivity to access the network. With all telecom service providers expanding in a big way across the country, finding network to connect would no more be an issue. This will also reduce lot of paper work.
Competitive Advantage
This is going to be the one of the key benefits which will drive enterprises to go wireless. Early adopters in order to stay ahead of their competitors will have to do everything possible to make sure that their workforce is able to communicate within and outside the organization by using wireless technologies.
Considering that customers require round the clock support and services, it would be in the interest of companies to provide their employees every possible wireless tool, which will help improve the customer services which in turn will mean a competitive edge over others.
Cost Reduction
Managing heterogeneous networks in an enterprise is becoming complex and thereby increases the capex and opex. An integrated mobile enterprise system if put in place by the enterprise will ensure that capex is reduced substantially with gradual reduction in opex. It will result in consolidation of devices and also a reduction in telephony costs. All leading vendors are offering an integrated IP telephony solution along with wireless functionality with tangible cost benefits. The wireless service providers are also bringing in innovative suite of data services to address the enterprise customers in a better way. Imagine the kind of transportation costs these companies incur towards returning to office simply to access their network or to file reports or do something that can be done without undertaking the time and money consuming travel.
Increased Efficiency and Productivity Improvement
Enterprises that are using wireless have shown a clear improvement in efficiency and thereby productivity. Flexibility and access to corporate network have provided a boost to the morale of the mobile workforce. Companies are experiencing increased sales due to increased responsiveness of field services. This has also reduced the cycle time. The field workforce is getting updates from the head offices about the status of inventory ensuring timely delivery of products.
The Map Ahead
With ground work having begun by service providers and policy makers in the run up to the launch of 3G services in India, enterprises can look forward to an increased value proposition to make their enterprise wireless. 3G technology aims to provide enterprises with more security, higher data speed to access their network and critical business applications. The bandwidth bottlenecks are set to go away with 3G. For example, downloading heavy attachments will no longer be a problem with the high speed internet access on the network.
Sudesh Prasad
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