A 2010 Cisco international workplace study discovered that 60 percent of respondents felt that they didn’t need to be in the office to be productive. Nearly five years later, the proliferation of smartphones and tablets makes that number feel a little bit low. Today’s employees are more reliant than ever on mobile technology to perform—and excel at—their jobs. This shift is driving revenue as workers are more productive and companies are adapting their processes to employees on the go.
An essential part of this evolution is mobile file sharing, which ensures employees and their managers have access to the documents necessary to be successful. Some companies, whether formally or on the fly, have turned to solutions such as Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive to meet their needs, but these solutions often fall short of expectations. Enterprise file sharing and sync (EFSS) platforms geared toward mobile devices often are better suited for organizations looking to seamlessly and securely foster cooperation and collaboration. Here are some reasons why better mobile file sharing can drive revenue:
Better Access on the Floor
Floor employees, whether they are interacting with customers in some corner of the store or in the kitchen learning how to prepare a new menu item, will benefit from mobile file sharing. The alternative is going into the warehouse to find an answer to a question (and leaving customers waiting on the floor) or relying on binders and printed materials to learn a recipe. Tablet-based EFSS solutions solve this access quandary. With mobile file sharing and an iPad or a Surface, retail workers can quickly find the information they need to make a sale, and restaurant employees can more efficiently learn that recipe in the kitchen without worrying about turning pages or spilling sauce onto paper instructions.
More Resources in the Field
Employees in the field face unique challenges in staying connected with the home office. Wi-Fi connections may be spotty, upload times may drag, and roving workers may not have the access they need when they need it. Today’s tablet solutions solve many of the issues of traditional mobile file sharing. Documents automatically download to employees’ devices, even when tablets are asleep, whenever a Wi-Fi signal is available. The files then reside locally, so if a connection isn’t possible, mobile workers will still have the access. Sending files back to corporate is just as easy. Employees in the field can focus on being more productive, which in turn can increase revenue.
Video Sharing, Made Simple
A major problem with standard file-sharing solutions such as Dropbox is that sharing videos is a pain. These files are big and eat up storage, particularly on tablets that don’t have a lot of it. Downloading the files takes time and bandwidth. Streaming a video also monopolizes bandwidth and can be prone to freezing and buffering. With the tablet-based platforms now available, all these issues become a thing of the past. Video files are compressed to a fraction of their original size, so transfer to and from is much less resource-consuming. Streaming ceases to be an issue because the videos are automatically downloaded to devices and are able to be viewed at the user’s leisure.
How does mobile file sharing help your company’s bottom line?
