Does anyone work 100% of the time from the desk anymore? I doubt it. Small- to medium-sized business employees become more mobile every year, and the technology tools needed to support them must change at a faster pace. If you don't believe me, just ask my father-in-law, a “retired” 60-something freelance theater director. Powered with his mobile device, instant messaging and a hosted backup/restore application, he's a one-man virtual worker.

Many consider wireless mobility and collaboration applications essential, but are SMB employees really that mobile? In fact, they are: 44% of all SMB employees are mobile workers. The type of mobile working — intraoffice, local travel, long-distance travel and telecommuting — varies based on a variety of different factors, including socioeconomic characteristics and job specifications and requirements.

Of those SMB mobile workers, 49% are mobile professionals, such as senior executives, managers, IT workers and consultants. Another 31% are in the field — employees engaged in sales, technical support or other field-related services. The remaining 21% are a mishmash of mobile specialty workers, including delivery personnel and drivers, factory/production staff, construction workers and tradespeople, public safety/service employees, faculty and more.

Mobility requires new types of working and collaboration between employees, suppliers and customers, with many of these tools coming from the consumer world rather than the enterprise world. Employees need real-time, near-real-time and non-real-time communications to get their jobs done effectively. Often the SMB IT departments haven't implemented enterprise-class (or SMB-class) solutions, so the SMBs use personal technology tools for work.

According to Yankee Group research, the top mobility- and collaboration-centric solutions for SMB employees are blogs, wikis, smartphones, broadband-enabled laptops (EV-DO or high-speed downlink packet access) and instant messaging. The best of these solutions can increase SMB productivity by up to 40%. These solutions also drive employee productivity outside the office, which is where many mobile workers are spending upward of 50% of their work weeks.

Strangely enough, these mobility- and collaboration-centric solutions do not increase productivity inside the office, so SMB employees that have high levels of travel are the ones who will benefit the most. In addition, many of these solutions supplement real-time communications with text-based communications, facilitating collaboration and allowing mobile workers to multitask and prioritize their hectic work lives.

There are many other solutions that can aid SMBs in a mobile environment, including classic enterprise-based solutions that generally require implementation for the entire company. Solutions that employ unified communications (UC) — often integrated with IP PBX or hosted voice-over-IP solutions — fit this bill. Although UC adoption by SMBs has been slower than hoped, it's important for partners to understand the other types of mobility and collaboration tools that drive SMB employee productivity.

U.S. SMB MOBILE WORKERS BY TRAVEL PATTERNS

Steve Hilton is the vice president of Yankee Group's enterprise research group with expertise in converged solutions.