The 'Mobile elite' are driving your business -- and driving IT crazy

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Are you one of the “mobile elite”? If so, you may be driving your IT department crazy and exposing your enterprise to risk. You also may be driving innovation and growth for your business.

A new survey by Forrester Research shows that the consumerization of the enterprise continues to cause great friction between workers who insist on using personal devices on their jobs and the IT workers who support them.

Despite the potential complications and dangers inherent in a BYOD workplace, the Forrester research – commissioned by Unisys for its third-annual consumerization of IT survey – concludes that it is incumbent upon IT to support these mobile workers, rather than forcing them to adhere to IT policies and procedures.

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“New research shows that your most innovative and connected employees are using personal devices, applications, and cloud services to get critical work done and engage with customers and partners,” Forrester writes in the Executive Summary. “This mobile elite uses personal tools because they enable greater productivity than the tools provided by IT. Enterprise IT departments are falling short in understanding and supporting this trend and thus missing out on the potential productivity benefits of these mobile-enabled employees and on dealing with important security risks.”

Based on interviews with more than 2,600 IT workers and nearly 600 business and IT decision makers in nine countries, the survey concludes that 23% of enterprise workers qualify as “mobile elites” – “the most innovative and customer-aligned people in your firm.” Further, these workers are “more likely than other employees to work with customers and business partners, making them a crucial group for IT to understand and assist, so that they can boost their productivity and minimize risks.”

Among the survey’s key findings:

• 38% of surveyed workers use unauthorized apps, software, websites or a personal cloud service for their jobs.
• 56% of the responding workers use unsupported personal devices or apps on the job because they say the tools provided by the enterprise are inadequate.
• IT managers aren’t necessarily buying that justification, with 72% surveyed arguing that employees are using their unsupported devices and apps in the workplace due to “personal preference.”

Whatever the reasons or perceived reasons for why employees choose to use their own devices and apps on the job, the mobile elite are inarguably influential and effective, the survey concludes.

• 37% of “mobile elite employees” have persuaded their bosses to “significantly change the way they do something at work” (compared with 27% of other employees).
• 33% of mobile elites say being able to use personal devices or apps for work allow them to “better serve their customers” (versus 24% of other employees).
• 67% of mobile elites say using personal devices or apps makes them more productive and efficient (versus 43% of other workers).

For all their influence, though, mobile elite workers can cause anxiety for IT workers and potentially run afoul of company policy in a serious way.

Forrester reports that 82% of mobile elites report downloading “unauthorized applications” to help with a job-related task, even as 75% of IT decision makers consider downloading rogue apps for work to be a firing offense.

But unauthorized apps aren’t the only potential risk to an enterprise: inadequate policies and tools can pose a greater danger, Forrester concludes.