Sponsor: Blackberry Limited

Like business leaders in every industry, decision makers in Financial Services (FS) organizations are increasingly turning to mobility to deliver on strategic objectives. They understand that mobilizing business processes can help improve customer satisfaction and response times; boost employee productivity; increase competitive advantage, and much more.

Most CIOs in these industries want nothing more than to help their line-of-business colleagues uncover new opportunities for growth.

As you decide on an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of factors to weigh. Comparing features across three or four shortlisted solutions can become incredibly time-consuming.

As a starting point, consider the issues in the following list. It’s derived from third-party research and best practices. While not exhaustive, it covers the critical areas you’ll need to think through as you arrive at a decision.

You may also want to review our CIO’s Guide to EMM, which addresses the same topics, and others, in more detail.

Today, employees are tech savvy and want more of a say about the tools that they use to get their work done. But BYOD creates a number of challenges when it comes to enterprise mobility, and it’s essential that organizations know how to go about finding – and managing – the Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) platform that meets their needs today and will continue to in the future. Because BYOD will undoubtedly expand to include other technologies, devices, and mobile endpoints.

As the idea of comprehensive Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) has taken shape, organizations are increasingly enabling the kind of true mobility their employees have been clamoring for – and apps are a driving force.

For businesses, the ability to make this sort of mobility a reality for users has a lot to do with new developments in technology: advances not just in Mobile Device Management (MDM), but in Mobile App Management (MAM), Mobile Content Management (MCM) and security. MDM systems manage the basic configuration of device settings, access parameters, and policies/controls. MAM and MCM are software and services that can control how apps and content are accessed and used inside and outside of the office.

The mobility needs of both IT administrators and end users are rapidly evolving.

In many ways, those needs appear to be at odds. Users want to get more done on the move, with less interference from administrators. IT, on the other hand, has to deal with incredibly complex security concerns, from the latest mobile malware to how to enable BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) safely.

Operating in a regulated industry, like healthcare, adds a layer of complexity to many things – including mobility.

While enterprises in other industries may be concerned about security – health-related organizations and their business associates are obliged by law to conform to detailed rules around storing and sharing sensitive data.

Taking care of business in the 21st century means tapping into the collective creativity of employees. Equipping the modern workforce with conferencing, communications and other collaboration software and services is driving businesses of all sizes to reach new levels of productivity.

But why should teamwork take a hit when employees are away from the office?

Until recently, every second story in enterprise IT news seemed to be about the ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) phenomenon and its ever-increasing stronghold on the enterprise world. And indeed, recent research suggests that roughly 60% of global businesses may have implemented some form of BYOD already.

A mobile computing policy document (sometimes called an Acceptable Use Policy) tells employees what’s expected of them when it comes to using smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices for work. It marks out the responsibilities of the company as well.

These policies serve multiple purposes – but the most important are:

• Protecting corporate data and assets.

• Allowing productivity, accessibility and collaboration to happen safely, whenever and wherever it benefits the company.

Government organizations and their agencies, partners and suppliers are under intense pressure to wring maximum value from taxpayers’ money – which means tapping in to new tools that can help increase productivity, drive efficiency, improve service and cut costs. Innovation in the mobile space has created a host of new opportunities for government departments to accomplish all of these goals, and more.

The BYOD trend has re-shaped enterprise mobility. While its pros and cons are debated endlessly in the media, there’s no denying the fact that with consumerization comes the co-mingling of personal and work use cases – and pure consumer devices offer no integrated protection against sensitive enterprise data leaking through personal channels.

As enterprises mobilize business processes, more and more sensitive data passes through and resides on mobile devices.

As more and more business processes go mobile, IT faces an ever-increasing number of security challenges. Users now have access to a multitude of personal communication channels, such as social networking sites, untrusted personal applications, webmail, web browsing, and instant messaging. Without the proper structures in place, data-transfer mechanisms such as P2P file sharing, USB connectivity, media card swapping, Bluetooth™ and NFC data transfer can all pose a threat to the enterprise.

In the past, better mobile security meant sacrificing the user experience, and vice versa.This paradigm ends with BlackBerry® Balance.™

Though smartphones, tablets and other devices continue to dominate the spotlight, the real stars of the next phase of the enterprise mobility evolution will be mobile apps. The introduction of innovative mobile apps and the mobilization of business processes will play leading roles in assisting enterprises of all sizes in realizing their enterprise mobility ambitions. To keep those plans on track, though, enterprises will need to adopt a mobile application management (MAM) strategy that gives IT the oversight to safeguard corporate data and end users the freedom and flexibility to ascend to new levels of productivity.

A next-generation MAM strategy, tightly integrated into an overall Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution, is a core requirement of organizations focused on maximizing the business-transforming benefits of enterprise mobility.

CIOs make tough decisions every day. To make the right ones, you have to trust your sources and be confident that you’re prioritizing the right issues.

Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) is top of mind for most CIOs today, not just because of BYOD and COPE (Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled), but also because of the clear opportunity that mobility presents to boost productivity, customer engagement, job satisfaction and more.

Support is an essential element of any Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) strategy. In the emerging EMM market, where different flavors of support are being offered by a variety of vendors with vastly different levels of expertise, integrating the right support into your EMM solution will maximize your mobility uptime, help to preserve business continuity and strengthen customer faith in your ability to deliver on your promises.

With the increasing acceptance of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in the enterprise, it’smore important than ever for your support partner to effectively cover your entire mobile environment, across all platforms. And it’s critical to select a strategic partner who will be there to support you before your deployment, while it’s underway and long afterward.