As

consumer tech continues to develop, more and more employees are using their own

smartphones and tablets in the world of work, while resisting—or simply not

making use of—corporate devices that their organisation has supplied.

While

employees may find they are more productive, this phenomenon poses a number of

questions to a business, the first of which is: “Do we embrace building

an environment in which BYOD (bring your own device) is accepted?”

This decision will determine whether BYOD becomes the thorn in the side of a

business or something that liberates it.

That

is not to say that there are no issues to overcome when fully integrating a

BYOD culture. For example, many business applications are the legacy of years

of development, involving ageing client-server applications that require a

Windows terminal to access, and which are more or less unusable on modern

mobile devices. Furthermore, when people do find a way to access those

applications from their personal devices, the business then has to cope with a range

of security and compliance challenges, including data

protection regulations andcontrolling who has access to what data

within the company.

This

is where NetSuite comes into one of its strengths. Web-based portability and

dedicated smartphone and tablet apps means that NetSuite is just as useable on

the move on a personal device as it is on a desktop in a corporate IT

environment. And because data access and security policies are set in the

application, you can implement a framework for

security

that governs all users, including those accessing

the application from personal devices.

Take

the Super Yacht Group, a publishing and media

company focused on the super yacht industry, as a prime example of a company that

is adapting to modern times. Thanks to NetSuite’s iPhone and iPad app, SYG staffers

have real-time, secure access to in-depth business analytics anywhere in the

world on their own devices as well as corporate devices. They can keep their

fingers on the pulse and react quickly to any issues that arise.

Pedro

Muller, Strategy Director at SYG, told us that the accessing this data on the

move has proven invaluable to the business, as staff can react quickly to any

customer demands regardless of their location. This more open and integrated

approach has led to increased revenues of 20%, simply because sales reps can

now handle an increased volume at any given time and place. Productivity of sales

reps has also increased as much as 80% due to increased efficiency.

The

example of SYG shows that there is a clear benefit of cloud

systems in supporting BYOD strategies. If your systems are open and

web-based, you can have productive staff, regardless of your users’ choice of

device. This is where cloud-focused resellers have a huge advantage as long as

the provider has a universal interface that will work across different devices.

It's

now becoming imperative for people to cast off the shackles of Stone Age

software and embrace the cloud, because this is what the modern world of work

looks like.