The adoption of internet- and web-enabled mobile devices is one of the ‘mega trends’ that will reshape many of our day-to-day tasks. Not just a consumer phenomenon, mobile devices will also have a big impact inside enterprises.

As discussed in the article Elements of a mobile enterprise strategy, there are many issues and questions to answer when considering the corporate use of mobile devices.

While this list can be daunting, the good news is that organisations are finding that simple approaches are often the best. These can be summed up in the question: what six things do staff want on their mobile devices?

Access the whole intranet?

One starting point for enterprise mobile functionality would be to provide a ‘mobile version’ of the intranet. Stripping out headers, footers and complex navigation, this provides a mobile-friendly way of accessing the entire site.

But is this what staff want or need? The reality is that there are few situations where staff want to browse all 10,000 intranet pages on a screen several inches across.

There will also be many elements of the intranet that are difficult to quickly adapt for mobile access. Online applications will often be the biggest challenge, limiting the interactive functionality that can be delivered to mobile devices.

[December one-pager, read the full article]