UAE office workers are increasingly looking to mobile communications solutions to collaborate and communicate more efficiently, according to research commissioned by Avaya.
More than half of the employees interviewed would prioritise a calls and data package on their mobile, while mobile access to e-mail is more desirable than internal calling and voicemail access, according to the Technology@Work Report, conducted by YouGov.
The report, which surveyed over 500 employees in the UAE and more than 3,000 worldwide, showed that 55 percent of UAE workers wanted independent access to calling and data packages, with half wanting mobile e-mail access. That compares to just 37 percent who expressed a desire for internal calls and voicemail access – the same number that wanted remote access to file servers and databases.
The ability to be more productive was the most cited benefit by UAE employees, with 58 percent believing this to be the case. UAE workers are also more likely than the global average to use video to collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers.
Digital transformation could generate $16.9 billion in extra revenue each year for companies in the Middle East from 2017 to 2021, as well as $17.3 billion in annual cost savings and efficiency gains, according to PwC.
While most UAE employees were satisfied with the collaboration and communications solutions available to them, more than one in five said they didn’t have access to the right tools, with mobile packages and mobile access to e-mails again leading demand. Almost half (44 percent) of respondents said that their ideal technology environment would build communication and collaboration abilities into existing enterprise applications.
The report showed that employees are also willing to use collaboration solutions outside their IT departments’ control, with 59 percent of UAE employees using WhatsApp or WeChat groups without management knowledge, exposing companies to security risks.
“Digital transformation’s key objective is speed and agility to an enterprise’s culture,” said Savio Tovar Diaz, director of sales engineering at Avaya, Asia, MEA & Turkey. “This is a new perception of technology adoption; how to facilitate highly mobile, dynamic teams to collaborate with each other virtually and still deliver a closed meeting-room experience. Very often, the collaboration and communication capabilities of employees are limited to basic connectivity solutions. In the new world, although people-to-people communications are predominant, machine-to-machine communications is rapidly growing.”
