Dial M for Maybe: Businesses Still Guessing What Their Mobiles Actually Do

There was a time when handing out mobile devices at work felt faintly revolutionary. But despite their potential as pocket-sized productivity engines, many devices were severely underutilised, while others were thrown into a dusty cupboard and forgotten about.

Fast forward, and mobile is no longer a shiny add-on, and few companies can afford to ignore it. In fact, it’s a critical driver of productivity, efficiency, and business outcomes. Mobile devices are how medical records are accessed in hospitals; they serve as the primary point-of-sale systems in shops, and they are the gateway to maps and flight details in the cockpit of most major airlines.

However, mobile is still often deployed with the strategic clarity of “everyone else is doing it”, lacking depth and direction. The result is a small fortune spent on devices that exist in a kind of organisational limbo, where they’re too important to ignore but too underutilised or poorly understood to justify an organisation strategy.

Therefore, businesses must build a mobile-first strategy that has the potential to evolve user workflows and deliver truly transformation business outcomes.‍

How do you see the state of play for business mobile technology today?‍

Nearly 60% of business owners now rely solely on mobile phones to run their operations. Businesses spend millions on mobile devices and apps, but often without proper workflow-driven optimisation. This makes the return on that investment very uncertain.

Part of the issue is a narrow view of mobile tech - we tend to think of mobile as just being the iPhone, but it’s so much more.

It’s everything from smart wearables to point-of-sale (POS) systems to tools like Apple Vision Pro headsets that can transform the way customers, employees, and partners interact with the business.

I like to think of them as “mission-critical devices”, meaning they play a key role in the operations of a business, rather than being just companion devices to a desktop or laptop.

Think of the number of small businesses you’ve visited recently that only accept card payments and use a mobile device to process them. If that device goes down, the business can’t take payments.

But despite that mission-critical status, mobile devices are still not really given the level of consideration as other essential tech.

It’s a dangerous oversight, because minor disruptions, unnoticed workflow gaps, or underutilised applications can ripple through operations, slowing tasks, frustrating employees, and eroding the customer experience.

Conversely, organisations that integrate mobile thoughtfully, measure usage, and optimise workflows gain visibility, control, and measurable productivity gains.‍

Why are mobile devices not used to their full potential?

Despite their importance to operations, businesses have deployed mobile devices a bit like distributing office mugs, simply handing them out with no further planning. There’s an assumption that productivity will simply happen once everyone has a shiny bit of kit in their pocket.

In reality, without any thought given to how work actually gets done, those devices become redundant. I would place a very confident bet that the majority of organisations cannot determine how, when, or even whether those devices are used in day-to-day operations.

I see this exact problem on a regular basis as I interact with business leaders. One particular example that stands out to me is a healthcare organisation that had deployed thousands of mobile devices; they simply couldn’t determine whether clinicians were actually using them at all.

Effectively, they’d spent a lot of money only to come back with the answer “I don’t know” on business efficiency – that’s insane.

Ultimately, the reason for this is that mobility programmes still focus on hardware procurement, asset tracking, and basic connectivity provisioning. In short, they’re continuing to treat mobile as a second-class device.

The problem lies less in technology and more in process. Mobile devices only deliver value when embedded in workflows that reflect real-world work.

How can mobile devices be integrated into business workflows?

Frontline employees rarely work at a desk. They are moving, responding to unpredictable conditions, juggling multiple tasks, and relying on connectivity that is anything but guaranteed.

Give them devices without workflow integration, and you get chaos in miniature: tools designed for efficiency become bottlenecks, notifications become distractions, and workflows slow rather than accelerate.

Organisations must understand how, when, and why devices are used. Which apps gain traction? Where do connectivity gaps disrupt operations? How do employees interact with mobile tools to complete critical tasks? Without this understanding, mobile fleets remain a costly “nice-to-have” rather than a productivity multiplier.

Without the real usage data just outlined, organisations cannot make decisions aligned with the reality of frontline work. You’re buying a fleet of sports cars and then only driving them in first gear – you might as well have just bought a Vauxhall Corsa.

Traditional, so-called “Unified Endpoint Management” approaches don’t work. Organisations need to put a real focus on mobile-first use cases. Data signals such as device posture, network context, user behaviour patterns, and application intelligence need to be consolidated into a single, mobile-first telemetry stream.

This can be done through Endpoint Management tools which combine foundational mobile device controls with additional insights to help a business optimise mobile deployments for each use case or department where they are deployed. These tools ensure all devices are monitored and security policies are enforced, so IT teams get a complete view of mobile risk and performance.

A more integrated approach reduces conflicts and ensures users have an uninterrupted work experience. This removes blind spots and allows both teams to influence how the device behaves without duplicating effort.

Embedding devices into workflows is what makes mobile work. Do it well, and the business hums; do it poorly, and the devices sit there, expensive, underused, and quietly judging you.

Visibility and context transform mobility from a fleet of devices to be managed into an intelligent ecosystem that can be optimised, secured, and continuously improved.

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