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Can You Run A Business Entirely From A Mobile Phone?

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The other day, at the Salesforce.com World Tour kickoff in New York, I heard a couple of prominent executives exclaim that they are doing most, if not all of their jobs, off their mobile phones.

Keith Block, vice president of Salesforce, pointed out that he was running most of his tasks off a smartphone, a view that was echoed moments later by Ulrik Nehammer, general manager of Coca-Cola . "Today I run most of my business from the phone," Nehammer said, adding that in his opinion, most work these days takes place out where the action is.  "The most dangerous place to make a decision is within the office," he added.  There's definitely a strain of mobilemania at Salesforce, as I heard Marc Benioff mention a couple of years back that he ran Salesforce exclusively from his mobile.

Is this a viable option for business leaders?  Is it now possible to do one's job, to run a business entirely from a mobile phone? In days of yore (you know, the last century), it was never surprising to hear of executives running most of their businesses with phones glued to their ears. Of course, it was still necessary to be within an office, to have access to staff members and all the paperwork.

Now, theoretically, a smartphone can fill in for staff members and reach the information on all that paperwork. Thanks to cloud, an abundance of resources is readily available right from the device, accessible through apps or HTML5 pages, that sync any and all devices to the cloud. Examples include Evernote for note-taking, Skype or Webex for conferencing, Box and Dropbox for file storage, Desktop.com for account management. For sophisticated functions such as business intelligence dashboards, many leading BI vendors, such as Yellowfin and Information Builders, offer mobile access.

There's no question that the mobile phone has become an essential tool for decision makers at all levels. But can it serve as the only tool? A survey of 511 executives conducted by Forbes Insights for Google last year found found that nine out of ten executives used smartphones for business, even while they were in the office. And here's the clincher: 10 percent  said smartphones were their exclusive device for day-to-day basis for decision making. (I helped design and analyze the survey.)

So at least one out of ten business leaders do run their businesses from their mobile phones. In theory, it's possible. As long as there are mobile-enabled versions of the required applications, there is very little that can't be done on a smartphone that can't be done on a PC.

There may be some issues that get in the way. If an organization depends on a lot of legacy applications, they may not be accessible via mobile phone. Then there are issues related to mobile's small form factors. Document review and creation, for example, may be too cumbersome.  It is possible to review and create documents from a smartphone, but a larger form factor is needed to do this well. A tablet would work better in this situation, since it can be attached to a keyboard, which provides the greater, laptop-like environment it takes to create and edit documents. Printing documents requires wireless printers nearby that support Apple AirPrint or Android apps.

Multitasking may be another challenge, especially if one of those tasks is engaging in a phone call. If you are on a call on a smartphone with an earpiece, it is also possible to also engage in online tasks such as looking up data while speaking. But that earpiece is essential to make it work, and watch your battery life.

Data security concerns may hamstring some efforts, particularly for lower-level executives. A call center manager, for example, may not be able to pull up a customer record on his or her personal phone, to avoid having sensitive data leaving the building. (This may be okay on a company-issued smartphone, however.)

Even with other devices (such as PCs) readily available, many executives find it faster and simpler to simply use their phones. As part of my work on the Google mobility study, I spoke with says Rich Mooney, managing director of Essence Digital, a global marketing and business development firm, who illustrated this. “If someone’s just told me about a product or service I’ve never heard about, I’m going to whip out my mobile or pick up the closest tablet to find out more, rather than try and remember it for when I’m next sitting in front of a desktop,” he said.

Some executives simply live 24x7 off their mobiles, oftentimes with assist from tablets for those workloads requiring larger form factors. When I spoke with Todd Walter, chief technologist for the Americas at Teradata, he said, "I'm talking to you  on my iPhone and I have my iPad in my hand."  For Walter, the only thing he needed a PC for anymore was spreadsheet analysis. "In airports, on the place, in between meetings, sitting in Starbucks between customers, it's very rare for me to boot up my laptop.  Its so much quicker to grab the device and to keep up on the device, than it is to boot the laptop." The only thing he still needed a PC for was preparing PowerPoint slides, he said.

In a recent article, Jennifer Pattee founder of Basic Training, a collaborative fitness site, described to Hunter Walk how she runs her business entirely from a mobile phone. All she needed was "a product that aggregates all my contacts, emails, and sales pipelines that’s also super simple and elegantly designed.'

It is now possible to run most, if not all, of a business from a small device such as a smartphone. For many executives, it may be more productive than fiddling with a laptop or PC.  Who knows -- maybe having a desk with no laptop or monitor in sight will become the signifier of corporate rank.