India’s mobile workforce will grow 53% over next 4 years to reach 205 million by 2015, says a new report by Springboard Research. As many as 65% will be equipped with smart mobile devices, it suggests. However, while India has one of the world’s largest and fastest growing mobile subscriber bases, enterprise adoption of mobile strategies is still at a nascent stage.
The Springboard Research report* adds: “With today’s consumers becoming increasingly mobile and well informed, enterprises must follow suit. A mobile enterprise can experience a range of business benefits including operational efficiency and enhanced customer interaction and engagement. The resulting upside in productivity, revenue and market share cannot be ignored by Indian CXOs.”

The new report titled, ‘Moving Towards a Mobile Enterprise – Journey of India Inc.’ suggests a four-phased roadmap for companies embarking on a mobile enterprise strategy.
- Conventional Mobility: basic apps such as e-mail, messaging, contacts, and calendar.
- Automated Workforce: critical apps like ERP, CRM and salesforce automation. This allows mobile workers to minimize paperwork, reduce back-to-office visits, improve productivity, and achieve higher sales closing ratio.
- Always Connected: apps that extend real-time communication and collaboration capabilities to employees anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
- Pervasive Mobility: apps that integrate function-specific applications to enhance brand image and bring efficiencies in internal operations such as finance and human resources.

“We are in the post-PC era where the most important apps are being developed on mobile platforms first. sales, customer service, marketing, finance, HR – teams need access to real time information to meet the demands of today’s business environment,” says Steve McWhirter, SVP, Enterprise Sales, salesforce.com, Asia Pacific.

*Springboard Research, “Moving Towards a Mobile Enterprise – Journey of India Inc.”, June 15, 2011, sponsored by salesforce.com

June 16 2011