Introduction
The advent of wireless communication and mobile technologies played a significant role in enhancing mobility during communication, which is gradually becoming a primary necessity for organizations due to the nature of the present business environment that is based on the global environment (Basole, 2008).
It implies that wireless communication and mobile technologies are essential for any organization to remain competitive in the current business context. There are various wireless technologies that organizations can adopt depending on the volume of data of the organization, the purpose for the wireless network such as voice and data, and the geographical scope of business performance (Connolly, 2011).
Businesses are significantly benefitting from the integration of wireless communication technologies into their strategic plans. Some of the core benefits of adopting wireless communication technologies in the organization include the establishment of a position through which the business can develop sustainable competitive advantage in the industry and offer solutions to the common business problems (Gupta et al., 2005).
In addition, the increase in mobile professionals simply means that adopting wireless technologies is in line with this business need, which can in turn translate to enhanced productivity through better collaboration among the workforce. This business approach can play an integral role in creating value for the business that the organization can exploit to increase its profitability.
The effectiveness of wireless communication technologies cannot be realized unless they are implemented in a manner that is cost-effective and enhances information management and security for the organization.
The basic inference from this observation is that mobile and wireless communication technologies should be incorporated into the business-level strategies of an organization. This paper explores the significance of incorporating mobile and wireless technologies in an organizational strategic planning (Bott et al., 2010).
Discussion of literature
The first strategic advantage associated with the incorporation of mobile and wireless technologies in the strategic planning of an organization is that it helps in improving communications among the members of the organization and mobile personnel.
Remote working is increasingly becoming an important element of effective execution of organizational processes of individuals who are increasingly preferring to work from home (Puertas, 2010). In addition, some business processes require high levels of mobility of the organizational members.
Gupta et al. (2005) asserts that wireless and mobile technologies come in handy in addressing this business need by ensuring efficient and timely information delivery on a real-time manner.
This implies that wireless and mobile technologies plays a significant role in the expansion of the communication lines within the organization, which in turn increases the capability and the capacity of the organization to respond to various business situation and demands (Connolly, 2011).
Wireless and mobile communication can be adopted at all the functional units of the business to facilitate interdepartmental coordination and communication, which in turn makes significant contributions towards organizational efficiency.
For instance, the logistics can use wireless communication technologies to coordinate the supply chain operations, while sales department can receive constant updates from their site personnel (Puertas, 2010).
A practical application of wireless communication and mobile technologies is through the use of Sales Force Automation, which primarily involves the use of software modules for streamlining all the activities pertaining to sales and to aid in the reduction of time that sales representatives need to spend on each of the steps of the sales process.
The basic implication of this is that it allows business enterprises to make use of a few sales representatives for the purposes of management of their customers (Bott et al., 2010).
Organizations are increasingly becoming knowledge-based, implying that business-level strategies are significantly relying on information shared within the organization. Adopting wireless and mobile communication devices is in line with this strategic goal of knowledge sharing at the organizational level (Gupta et al., 2005).
Wireless communication plays an integral role in fostering knowledge sharing culture within the organization. The knowledge-sharing culture principally involves sharing knowledge with the internal employees and stakeholders and external entities such as the government, its suppliers, customers and financial institutions. This is important in increasing the competitive advantage of the organization (Bott et al., 2010).
Knowledge management systems are vital in the present economy that is knowledge-based. Knowledge sharing strategies can be deployed by organizations to facilitate the creation, distribution, representation and the implementation of organizational insights (Ruhi & Turel, 2005).
These kinds of insights usually consist of knowledge that the individuals in an organization can use during the execution of organizational processes. The use of knowledge sharing in the marketing strategy of the organization is an effective approach to ensuring expansion of the organization (MacColl &Richardson, 2008).
This is so because the tactic involves an incorporation of the organizational culture and business management without impairing the organizational goals and objectives. It is arguably evident that adopting wireless and mobile communication technologies play an integral role in transforming organizations to be knowledge-based through the establishment of knowledge sharing culture.
Connolly (2011) claims that an organization can use such a position to increase its organizational efficiency in the present market place. Connolly offers an example of groupware applications, which are mainly used for the management of organizational knowledge by offering a means through which the organizational members can communicate and collaborate using an application suite.
Most of the groupware applications that are deployed by businesses include e-mailing platforms, file sharing repository, bulletin boards, blogs, forums and other platforms through which the employees of an organization can engage in organizational learning (Bott et al., 2010).
Wireless communication and mobile technologies also make significant contributions towards organizational efficiency, which is achieved by ensuring that there is smooth organizational information and workflow. Mobile and wireless communication devices make use of automation, which ensures that organizational tasks are executed effectively in a timely manner (Puertas, 2010).
In addition, wireless communication and mobile technologies facilitate the organizational management process through offering frameworks through which employees can be tracked and their work monitored. The wireless and mobile technologies integrate all the business functions within the organization, such as sales and human resource management.
This generally ensures that there is organizational efficiency (Gupta et al., 2005). Enhanced business efficiency implies that there is improved employee productivity, which in turn transforms to customer satisfaction. The outcome of this is that company develops a competitive advantage and increases its market share.
By exemplifying some of the use of wireless and mobile communication in organizational departments, the performances are appraised to ascertain its usefulness in an organizational context. The applications and systems are functionally flexible in some circumstances no matter how and where they are used within various business organizations.
The use of these applications and systems gets better in speed, reliability, and radical change in general at the operational, tactical, or strategic level in the company or anywhere else in the organizational departments (MacColl &Richardson, 2008).
Another strategic importance of wireless communication and mobile devices is that they enhance the convenience and efficiency of customer interactions, which provide the business with an opportunity to increase its responsiveness to its respective customers.
In almost all the industries, organizations are increasingly implementing wireless communication and mobile devices to enhance customer communications. This approach can be used to enhance customer satisfaction, which in turn plays an integral role in increasing the market share of the organization.
The basic inference is that incorporating wireless and mobile technologies in the strategic plan can be used by an organization to establish sustainable competitive advantage. The real-time communication with its customers also helps in enhancing customer satisfaction, which is in accordance with the business strategy that aims at the realization of the goals and objectives.
Wireless communication and mobile technologies have also enhanced the efficiency of transaction processing systems, which offer a framework through which the customers and key stakeholders can communicate with the organization. Wireless and mobile communication devices can facilitate effective execution of relationship marketing (MacColl &Richardson, 2008).
The CRM system helps in marketing, sales, and maintains a cordial customer service aspect of doing business. The CRM software provides a service scheduler mechanism for various activities and schedules them by resource, time, or service (Sorensen& Al-Taitoon, 2008).
The software also contains a marketing automation module that helps in assembling customers or guide lists, creates and tracks marketing campaign progress. Its campaign wizard assists in the distribution of ‘’e-mail blasts’’ to targeted lists, and automatically tracks responses.
Some CRM applications allows users to effortlessly customize views and business logics with the intention of automating repetitive tasks, and transfer data to other functional applications for analysis. In addition, wireless communications and mobile technologies provide an integrated platform through which the salespeople can establish more time to connect with their existing and prospective customers and make good deals out of such relationships (MacColl &Richardson, 2008).
Currently, businesses significantly face challenges that involve the control of inventory management, enhancement of productivity and controlling quality. The incorporation of wireless and mobile technologies can play an integral role in addressing the business challenges associated with management of inventory.
Keeping track of the inventory is considered a core business process for any business, and that potential errors that may arise in such phases of production and business processes can result in significant costs for the business which may include shipping of wrong goods, restocking of already paid goods and in the worst-case scenario, it can result in customer dissatisfaction (Shakun, 2001).
Incorporating wireless communication and mobile technologies can play a significant role in ensuring that core business processes such as inventory management are done in an effective manner, which in turn translates to an improved efficiency and productivity for the business (Lawinski, 2011).
Effective decision making among the members of an organization plays an important role in ensuring the success of the organization (Lawinski, 2011). In most cases, decision making is constrained by lack of adequate information at hand in order to ensure that people within the organization are involved in complex decision-making procedures that require speedy responses.
In most case, mobile workers in an organization face the challenge making complex decisions without having access to full information (MacColl &Richardson, 2008). This is due to the fact they lack access to most of the background information required to make complex decisions.
Wireless communication and mobile technologies come in handy in such situations due to the fact that they offer a communication framework through which employees can share real-time data to facilitate effective decision-making to enhance the reliability and quality of the decisions made by site personnel (Shakun, 2001).
Organizations can rely on wireless communication to have access to central organizational data. This helps in enhancing decision-making at all levels of the organizations, which in turn makes significant contributions towards enhancing the efficiency of the organization (Hurme, 2005).
Employee productivity is one of the strategic goals and objectives of organizations. This means that organizations should adopt business-level strategies that are aimed at increasing employee productivity. Wireless communication and mobile technologies play an integral role in enhancing the productivity of employees in an organization (Doran, 2010).
Most of the business operations are process-oriented, whereby service delivery usually takes place in a sequence of steps ranging from the customer to various internal business processes that involve various members of the organization.
Wireless communication and mobile technologies have the capacity of enhancing the efficiency through elimination and integration of various processes, which in turn play an integral role in enhancing the efficiency of the business processes (Doran, 2010). Wireless communication and mobile technologies have played an integral role in elimination of manual processes in the organization.
Business automation using mobile devices enhances workflow efficiency at the organizational level through reducing the number of people required to accomplish a particular task. This implies that the efforts of such people will be redirected towards business functions that require more manpower (Lawinski, 2011).
Efficiency and productivity in the organization are also enhanced by the fact that wireless and mobile technologies result in faster and more timely information transfer within the organization and external stakeholders.
Employee productivity is also enhanced due to the fact that wireless communication and mobile technologies increase flexibility and mobility of the employees; this can be achieved by networking the mobile devices to enhance communication at the organizational level (Hurme, 2005).
The concept of business value is complex, and mostly entails cost-effectiveness while not imposing significant constraints on variables such as efficiency, employee productivity, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction (Schlosser, 2002).
Apart from facilitating the achievement of the above, investing in wireless communication and mobile technologies is an efficient strategy that the organization can use to cut costs (Doran, 2010). Wireless communication and mobile technologies serve as a replacement of the traditional approaches to communication within the organization.
For instance, wireless devices eliminate the costs associated with purchase of connecting wires and associated maintenance costs. This comes as an added advantage for organizational members who are always on the move, who attain flexibility while the organization cuts on investment costs (Nah et al., 2005). Costs can also be cut through elimination of the need of personnel required to undertake some organizational tasks.
Mobile devices that use applications such as the Sales Force Automation have eliminated the need to have many sales and marketing representatives in the field (Hurme, 2005). The success of a sale representative is principally determined by time efficiency, saleable product and sales leads. These three elements form the most significant challenges that most salespeople face during their sales activities (Schlosser, 2002).
Despite the fact that Sales Force Automation systems cannot alter or enhance the recognition of the merchandise, it can enhance the overall effectiveness of the sales processes and increase the selling time of a sales representative (Schlosser, 2002).
Many SFA applications normally have frameworks through which the salesperson can assess whether his/her efforts are geared towards the right direction. In addition, they also facilitate the realization of sale opportunities in particular territories that were subjected to predictable closures (Doran, 2010).
Conclusion
It is arguably evident that the use of wireless and mobile technologies has significant business advantages to the organization, which can be used in the establishment of competitive advantage and enhance profitability. This business approach can play an integral role in creating value for the business and business advantage that the organization can exploit to increase its profitability.
The effectiveness of wireless communication technologies cannot be realized unless they are implemented in a cost-effective manner, which enhances information management and security for the organization. The basic inference from this observation is that mobile and wireless communication should be incorporated into the business-level strategies of an organization.
In addition, organizations are increasingly becoming knowledge-based, implying that business-level strategies are significantly relying on information sharing within the organization. Adopting wireless and mobile communication devices is in line with this strategic goal of knowledge sharing at the organizational level.
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