As remote working solutions become more ubiquitous for many organisations, so too does the idea of running everything from a single device.

Achieving this doesn’t sound so impossible when you realise you have everything you need right there in the palm of your hand. By connecting and unifying your devices, you have the same access to documents, shared folders, instant messaging, customer invoices, and more on your mobile, that you would do on a laptop or a tablet. Many businesses are making the switch to mobile operations because of the considerable benefits it brings:

• Easier communication with both customers and staff

• More flexibility means more freedom

• The power of the cloud, ready to be harnessed

It’s easier for smaller businesses to make the change to an agile, mobile-first approach because they don’t have as many complicated, integrated legacy systems to circumvent. Because smaller businesses have a less complex infrastructure, their path to increased mobility is shorter.

Some of the advantages to running your business from your phone are obvious. As a business owner, you never have to leave your organisation unattended – you’re a click away from dealing with a customer or talking to a colleague at all times.

To achieve true agility in business, managers need to be liberated from infrastructure that ties them down to a single location or environment. By adopting a mobile-first approach, you’re able to function from any location while still having access to the tools you need. Customers, especially Gen Z and Gen Y, expect immediacy in their customer service experience – by having access to your organisation at the push of a button, you’re able to exert your influence easier.

Small businesses really feel the benefits of adopting a mobile-first approach, both in the way they operate, and in their return on investment. It’s a worthwhile change to make, and one that’s in keeping with business transformation in modern times.

Capitalising on Vodafone 5G, currently available in 54 towns and cities across the UK, removes the burden of lost connections and internet lag. If your business is entirely mobile, you don’t have to worry with 5G business broadband – it empowers businesses with lightning-fast downloads and buttery smooth performance.

Having the power to respond immediately to your customers has a knock-on effect, dramatically improving their customer experience. Focusing on mobility means helping your employees better serve new and existing customers. Equipping employees with the right tools helps them focus on high-priority tasks, allowing them to lend their expertise where it’s needed.

Equipping your remote staff with the means to build a better, more effective working day for themselves is known as mobile workforce management. Managing your remote staff is just as crucial as managing those that work in the office. By improving the productivity and efficiency of those working away from the office, you improve the customer experience on the other side of the business.

When your team’s working remotely, trust is paramount. For remote working to truly function, trust must be built between both employers and workers. Everyone works differently. Granting that flexibility to your workers’ routines not only results in happier employees but makes them more productive
too. Sometimes, those same employees even work multiple roles within the company.

In smaller businesses, where people take on multiple roles, an emphasis on mobility can help them manage that load on the go. Employees can have multiple ‘personas’ on each device, and maintain their roles with ease, even on the road. Thanks to the power of mobile apps, when on the road, you can see and edit documents as though you were on a desktop in an office environment. Not only that, but cloud-based storage makes it possible to seamlessly upload and collaborate on documents in real-time with colleagues, with files updated and accessible across devices. By connecting and integrating your mobile devices across your business, and embracing that mobile-first approach, you and your employees can be just as productive outside the office space.

By utilising your workforce more efficiently, you can also improve productivity by generally enhancing the work/life balance.

Transforming to an agile business opens the doors for enhanced efficiencies across your business. By ensuring your employees have everything they need when they’re away from the office, you’re able to streamline your processes and bolster your workforce.

At the back end of the business, employees understand that enterprise mobility management solutions help make their jobs easier and more productive, while customers get a much better, often more tailored experience.

The benefits don’t end there however – as a business owner, you want the comfort of being able to check your business KPIs at a glance, even when on holiday. You want greater visibility over your entire business ecosystem, while providing your employees with a stronger, more enriched work/life balance. With a mobile-first approach, all this canbecome a reality.

When you’ve successfully transformed your business into an agile,
mobile-first operation, your mobile phone becomes the central hub for everything relating to your organisation. This, combined with the right
suite of applications, gives you complete control over your business, even when working remotely. When adopting a new approach, it all starts with communications.

The perfect mobility infrastructure

Having an agile business is about more than just running everything from your smartphone. It’s about being able to provide a seamless customer experience no matter where you are.

Your customers want a coherent journey between your people and devices. The first step towards achieving this is a flawless communications infrastructure. A communications platform enables your people to be contactable anywhere, and anyhow. It also makes it easier for you to connect with your employees and gain greater visibility over your mobile network.

It’s no longer sufficient to simply be mobile-friendly – your entire customer journey needs to be in sync for the ultimate customer experience.

By working with a team of experts, you can navigate the necessary contracts, tariffs, and deals to ensure your business gets the mobility services to suit its unique needs. With the right partner by your side, the burden of transforming the business is lifted, and renewals, upgrades, and more can be taken care of while you focus on one thing – growing your mobile business with the proper applications.

You can now operate your business from the palm of your hand, thanks to best-in-class applications that are tailored to your individual requirements. The right applications can improve communication and collaboration among team members, all while being managed through a single platform.

MICROSOFT 365 FOR BUSINESS

Microsoft Office is used by over a million companies worldwide.
Having Microsoft 365 for Business available on your mobile means you have access to industry-standard applications including Outlook, Word, and Excel at your fingertips. This enables you to manage your documents, spreadsheets, and business-critical emails from your mobile, wherever you are.

• Microsoft 365 updates automatically every month, meaning you stay in the loop

• Microsoft 365’s omnichannel approach makes it available across multiple devices

• Every user is granted 1TB of completely secure cloud storage

Utilise Vodafone One Net Business to unify your communications. This secure, cloud-based phone system links up your landline and your mobile communication networks, making it essential for small businesses who can operate from just one phone number.

• Improve communication throughout your business

• Harness the power of the cloud to give your staff the choice of where and how they work

Determined to use your mobile as your sole device? One Net Mobile lets customers move their mobiles to the cloud first – the first step on the journey to Unified Communications. Benefits of One Net Mobile include call handling features, routing calls to other colleagues when out of the office, shared data allowances, and data capping.

A Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scheme is a really affordable means of making your business mobile. But with a range of different devices accessing your business data, securing and managing those devices is crucial. There are two things needed to ensure this.

UNIFIED ENDPOINT MANAGEMENT (UEM)

If your corporate data is being accessed on a personal device, you’ll
want peace of mind that it’s being done so safely. UEM secures sensitive corporate data when it’s being accessed remotely, employing cuttingedge containerisation technology to separate company and personal data on the same device. This means only the right people are authorised to access it.

Unmanaged mobile devices are a huge risk to businesses, but mobile device management is a scalable solution that protects your mobile network.

MDM provides your enterprise with improved security throughout, which is integral if you’re planning on taking your business mobile. MDM security protocols can cover every device on your network, and empower you to take immediate action in the event of a suspected security threat.

MDM can:

• Control remote access to sensitive data

• Offer remote data wiping in the event of lost or stolen devices

• Require user authentication to gate private information

Business connectivity is about more than just your internet connection. Connectivity solutions tailored directly to your business needs can help you stay online, no matter your company size. From unbelievable 5G speeds to cloud services that change the way you conduct business entirely, a unique solution built from the ground up for your business is possible with the right team.

Keeping remote workers tethered to the rest of your team is vital in not only being able to offer a cohesive output, but also keep people happy and feeling involved. Using portable devices is also having a positive impact on employee productivity, with employees saving 58 minutes per day, while increasing productivity by 34%.

5G IS HERE
The blindingly fast speeds of 5G business broadband will transform businesses and the way
they connect to, and conduct business in, the online space. With the right equipment and technical expertise, your business will be in a position to capitalise on the latest technology. 5G offers speeds up to 10x faster than 4G, giving your business unprecedented access to files on the go, making it easier and more efficient than ever to work from a mobile.

Providing the ultimate customer experience should be at the forefront of your plan to adopt a mobile-first approach. That’s possible through cloud telephony technology, which allows you to be on call no matter where you are. Remove all roadblocks for your customers by utilising the transformative benefits of the cloud.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a revolution in communications technology. VoIP lets you make and receive calls from any device connected to the internet, meaning your computer, smartphone, and tablet are unified. Unified communications are key to offering a totally seamless customer experience and one of the main tenets of taking your business mobile.

Hosted VoIP solutions are considered by many businesses to be the way forward, offering superb call quality, network reliability, and cost-saving opportunities. By taking your call processes to the cloud, you never have to shut the phone lines. With cloud VoIP, all features and services are delivered through the cloud – there’s no hardware to purchase or maintain. It’s perfect for SMEs.

Modern contact centres should be tailoring their service to the digital customer, who expects immediate responses and constant, unrestricted access to your agents. By utilising cloud technology, your contact centre can offer an omnichannel, scalable service for the best possible journey. Your team can start and continue conversations no matter where they are, regardless of the technology, be it via email, instant messenger, or social media.

Connect4Teams

Whether you have 2 agents or 200, easy integration with your existing telephony and mobile system is key to delivering brilliant customer experiences. Onecom Connect4Teams helps you optimise your unused applications and create a unified communications solution perfectly designed (and costed) for growing businesses looking to access worldclass cloud telephony on a reduced scale.

To achieve business agility and a mobile-first approach, you’ll need
a knowledgeable team of specialists by your side to help with the transition.

If your business needs to become agile, and transition to a mobile-first approach to receive the benefits of modern technology such as the
cloud, Onecom can help.

As a business, we were born in the cloud, with a strong mobile heritage
– in fact, Onecom won the Vodafone Innovation Partner 2020 award. A strategic top tier partnership with Vodafone and specialist knowledge means we can help provide you with different options, and methods for escalating those solutions down to your staff. The first step is to get the latest technology into the hands of your employees – from there, it’s
simple to create a seamless working environment that enables workers to send and receive documents, all while secured through UEM tools already implemented onto your devices.

By giving you access to a suite of curated applications that enable you to run your operations smoothly from your smartphone, it’s possible to take your business mobile and achieve true agility – and we can manage it all from a centralised platform.

Our OneCloud cloud communications platform (CMSP) is mobile-ready. By managing all of your apps from one, easily accessible location, you gain total visibility over your operations. A plethora of options are at your disposal:

• Order new equipment
• Add Bolt Ons as and when required
• Raise tickets for faulty equipment
• Replace services
• Order new services
• Order SIM cards and perform SIM-Swaps
• Manage and see your interactions with Onecom

OneCloud is all about offering choice in the way you want to approach your mobile-first business.

We hope the information in this guide enables you to take the first steps in transforming your business into a mobile-first, truly agile enterprise.

Why not check if your town or city is 5G enabled to begin reaping the benefits of a superfast connection, or talk to us directly to discover how your business could become mobile-first, without compromise.