Tackling BYOD Concerns With A Mobile Enterprise Content Management Solution

By Kristen Galliani, Integrated Marketing Communications, DocuShare Business Unit, Xerox

Take a look at the employees around your office. What do you see? I bet you see people replying to emails, speaking to customers, looking over documents, or maybe researching a new assignment on the Web. But take a closer look at the tools they are using to accomplish these tasks. Now I bet you notice an array of mobile devices – tablets, smartphones (maybe even two phones!) – being used by your colleagues.

The rise of bring your own device (BYOD) in the corporate environment is exploding. According to a recent Cisco study, the average number of connected devices per knowledge workers in 2014 will reach 3.3 devices, up from 2.8 in 2012.

Some of these devices might be corporate-owned. Many organizations, however, are seeing more and more employees bring their own personal devices to the office, using them to work on corporate documents. It’s no longer a question of being able to use personal devices – employees expect to work from their mobile devices. Gartner has even predicted that half of all companies will implement a mandatory BYOD policy by 2017.

Now organizations face the question: how can we maintain control over the integrity and availability of our data? Understandably, companies have security concerns, particularly when employees are using mobile devices to edit and share sensitive documents. There are options that make secure sharing achievable. Companies that are proactively planning for employees working on-the-go are strengthening workflow while maintaining security. By giving employees access to a secure enterprise content management (ECM) system that is accessible from a mobile device allows mobile workers to easily search, view and download documents or share content as part of a business process.

Some mobile device solutions also include features where people can use their phone or tablet to capture images, meeting notes and business documents to share with colleagues via a secure website. Other mobile programs have the option to print documents from their mobile ECM solution when they have an email-based print solution installed on their server.

Companies with well-managed BYOD programs are seeing increased productivity among their staff. BYOD allows employees’ time to be more flexible, so they can edit documents while on the train ride home, from a remote location or traveling  from one business meeting to another.