BlackBerry Smartens Up
Gregory Wade, managing director, Research In Motion (RIM) Southeast Asia, talks exclusively to Director’s Jon Russell about BlackBerry smartphones, business efficiency, predictions for 2010 and the BlackBerry Bold 9700.
What is the business argument enterprise adoption of BlackBerry devices?
There is a lot of thought that goes into deciding to implement a BlackBerry smartphone roll out. Companies must go through the values and decide where the benefits to users lie.
Return on investment is a key message that we emphasise year on year. An IPSOS Reid study into BlackBerry smartphone usage found that employees using a BlackBerry could convert 60 minutes of downtime into productive time per day (250 hours a year) while a BlackBerry increases the efficiency of the teams employees work with by 38%.
Enterprise applications, such as SAP, salesforce.com and others, enable BlackBerry users to be more productive and efficient. As the devices can multitask, just like a computer, an executive can log into SAP to approve invoices while maintaining an email session, browsing the web and communicating on BlackBerry messenger, for example.
Security is also a major concern. Four years ago there was limited exposure and attention paid to mobile security in Asia; back then the attitudes of the region’s business surprised me. Now we’re seeing a change with business understanding the importance - they can’t have mission critical devices grinding to a halt.
Security is a big concern for us, it is a part of our heritage and a fundamental part of our BlackBerry platform for business.
