At a recent meeting with Greg Swift, National IS Director at Grant Thornton one of the largest accounting practices in the UK a number of key imperatives for end users beyond connectivity and coverage became clear.

Devices: The device is key, to control and deliver applications that would enhance the business Grant Thornton decided to standardise on one mobile device (RIM’s Blackberry) for all. This greatly increased the ability to control and push applications as well as having a proven and tested email delivery platform.

Cost Control: The demand to connect anywhere is as high as in other organisations but some simple education tools such as a crib sheet indicating the best connection methods based on the employees environment as well as policy controls were key to making sure the mobile enterprise did not result in massive mobile data charges.

Applications: Some simple applications can really drive user adoption, seemingly obvious things like a location aware employee directory, and links into the corporate CRM system to complete basic actions such as scheduling and clearing tasks can deliver real business benefit and kick off the journey to more sophisticated mobile applications.