>>  Mobile solutions are great. I think we all get that now. The new strategy imperative is the need to properly manage it all: The meticulously researched business-rugged devices. The impulsively purchased smartphones (casually dotting expense reports). Various cellular contracts. Whatever it is your employees are using to work more efficiently and effectively away from their desks, you need to have a plan for managing it. As this month's cover story points out, you can create a plan and manage your assets in-house, or you can hire a third party to do it. Take your pick, but have a plan.

 

A whitepaper by Integrated Mobile, a provider of managed mobility solutions (MMS), says a custom MMS solution can reduce the total cost of wireless ownership by 15 to 40 percent. It suggests working with a provider that has a history of successful implementations; that can customize a solution to your company's needs; that offers comprehensive tools for the real-time management of devices and service; and one that can support the entire lifecycle of your wireless usage, from procurement through support and ongoing service.

 

Similarly, a June report from AberdeenGroup stated: "The value of any wireless solution must be tied to the quantifiable results it can deliver to an organization." The research firm emphasized the need for a management structure as well as a means of measuring success--but the focus here, surprisingly, was on WLANs. The best-performing companies, a group it refers to as Best-in-Class, "are able to derive a 21 percent increase in their workforces' productivity from using their WLAN--a rate that is 71 percent higher than all other organizations."

These forward-thinking companies not only recognize the benefits and improved mobility that WLANs can offer, but they have tools for centrally managing their infrastructure, they're attuned to the hard results of their investments, and they're looking for new ways (such as voice over WiFi) to further leverage them.

Mobility hardly gets smarter than that.