Mobility is rapidly becoming an essential element of the standard business productivity toolkit - and companies that fail to include mobility in their IT strategies are being short-sighted, says Zulfiq Isaacs, MD of Liquid Thought.
"Workers who can access their e-mail, files and other data on the move can recover up to 47 minutes of downtime every day," says Isaacs. "That translates directly into productivity gains. Right now the early adopters have a slight competitive-edge, but soon everyone will be doing it."
Liquid Thought's GoWireless corporate mobile service division is one of very few South African service providers that can integrate mobility seamlessly with existing corporate productivity suites.
"The challenge with mobility is to integrate it properly with the rest of your IT environment," says Isaacs. "Done properly, you can give people mobile access not only to their personal information managers but also to CRM and ERP systems. In fact, this is essential if you're going to get maximum value from mobile devices. But mobile vendors don't necessarily have the skills to support mobility in corporate environments - there is a very particular skill set required."
The benefits are not limited to large businesses, though. Together, Liquid Thought and GoWireless are also able to offer a total business productivity solution to small and medium enterprises as well.
Liquid Thought is the preferred mobile integrator for Integr8 IT and Redlinx, both Gold System Integrators on the Microsoft and Novell platforms respectively.
"Our partnerships extends the value chain for the customer and enables us to deliver seamless integration solutions on the mobile platform," says Isaacs. For smaller companies, this enables us to offer turnkey technology solutions that include mobility in addition to systems deployment and business productivity suites.
"We have bundled small business packages including mobility available on an affordable rental model from as little as R3 500 per month for an 'out-of-the-box' productivity solution," says Isaacs. "The technologies have reached the stage where small businesses stand to realise major benefits from relatively small investments. The beauty of a turnkey solution is that you don't need to maintain expensive in-house expertise, which was always a limiting factor before."
The key, concludes Isaacs, is for small businesses to integrate IT planning into their overall strategies: "There are many service providers in the market now who focus specifically on small and medium-sized businesses. If you can find the right one, the business benefits can be well worth it."
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Liquid Thought delivers innovative enterprise productivity and business solutions to medium and large companies. It has particular expertise in collaborative Web and mobile technologies, online trading platforms, as well as ERP and CRM business platforms that help companies optimise their use of business information and accelerate their delivery capacity. A Microsoft Certified Partner and 100% black-owned company, Liquid Thought was recently named one of South Africa's Top ICT Companies for 2005.
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