More than ever, the modern workforce is unshackled from desks in an office. Thanks to smartphones, nearly-ubiquitous Internet access in most populated areas, and the cloud, the “work from anywhere” dream is basically now a reality.
Mobile working is quickly becoming the new normal, with analysts predicting that 72 percent of the United States’ total workforce will be mobile by 2020. Key statistics from recent study of the American workforce show:
- 58 percent of office space in America is vacant at any given time
- 67 percent of CIOs and IT professionals believe mobility will impact business as much as the Internet did in the 1990s
- 77 percent of employees felt more productive when working offsite
Most interestingly, the 77 percent were experiencing more than just a feeling. If you run the numbers, the stats prove employees really are more productive when they’re mobile. Each remote worker was estimated to product 240 extra hours of work per year. This averages out to six additional weeks of work and over $5,000 of value per worker.
What makes this level of productivity available to mobile and remote workers is a combination of the cloud and mobile apps. However, one of the most contentious decision points keeping many workers from “going all in” on mobile is the app experience. Because smartphones and tablets have relatively small touchscreens, some workers used to the mouse-and-keyboard desktop experience have a bias against mobile apps.
Microsoft addresses this concern by designing their Office 365 productivity suite using their “mobile-first, cloud-first” motto. Since 2015, Microsoft has taken user feedback to improve upon their native mobile apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote on iOS and Android devices. Just in the past year, Microsoft has redesigned mobile apps for SharePoint, Skype For Business, and Yammer to be responsive and more like their browser-based desktop counterparts. These enhancements have gotten to the point where the mobile Office 365 app experience on an iPhone or Galaxy Tab is on par with using the desktop versions available on PC and Mac.
An added benefit to using Office 365 mobile apps on Android and iOS devices is the centralized, secure cloud storage afforded to users of Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint. At Amaxra, we have experienced the productivity gains from collaborating and sharing documents with co-workers using Office 365 mobile apps and the cloud—it enabled a significant portion of this blog to be written 2,093 miles away from our headquarters in Redmond, WA.
Want to learn how your company can benefit from deploying Office 365 to make your workforce more mobile and productive?