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Mobile devices can increase workers’ mobility — and their productivity too. The portability of tablets, for example, enables workers to easily work at home, while commuting, on business trips, during client visits, and in non-traditional work spaces.
American Airlines is giving tablets to flight attendants, for example, to do everything from taking food orders to checking on connecting flights, according to TabTimes. Doctors can also use tablets to check on patients’ health records while making rounds.
Where Tablets Win
About 30% of information workers are now mobile, using three or more devices, working from multiple locations, and using many apps, according to Forrester Research. The group also predicts tablets will triple to 905 million in use for work and home globally by 2017.
While PCs are still the top choice for workhorse applications like word processing and spreadsheets, tablets are winning out in other areas, such as file sync and sharing; presentations; and internal social networks and communications, according to the group’s 2012 Forrsights Workforce Survey.
Sharing Everywhere
For seamless transitions between multiple devices in multiple locations, some 30% of information workers use tablets for file sync and sharing, compared to 16% who use PCs, according to Forrester.
Workers can fit more tasks into the day by starting a document on a PC or Mac, finishing it on a tablet, and sharing it with co-workers through cloud sharing and storage services such as Dropbox, iCloud or SharePoint. Some 70% of employees using Dropbox use it for work or work and personal files, Forrester reports.
Showing Off
Using tablets to make presentations can help sales people educate buyers and drive higher sales, says Forrester’s JP Gownder. About 36% of information workers use tablets for presentations, compared to 27% who use PCs, according to the group.
Sales teams use presentations to pitch new clients, marketing teams show off products with interactive product views, and upper management can use slideshows for board meetings or speeches..
Socializing with Co-Workers
Tablets are much more popular than PCs for internal social networking and communications, with 24% of information workers using tablets vs. 17% using PCs, according to Forrester.
Research firm Gartner Inc. additionally predicts that half of larger companies will have internal Facebook FB +0.65%-like social networks by 2016, and 30% will consider those networks essential for communication.
Companies are also using mobile apps on tablets to replace internal paper communications such as company newsletters, annual reports and training manuals. American Airlines is giving its pilots iPads to replace large in-flight bags that hold thousands of pages of charts and flight manuals, according to TabTimes.
For businesses of all sizes, tablets can extend the reach and productivity of employees to do more work in more locations–and potentially achieve more effective results.
