Telework USA

Clip of the Day: John Hiatt

The last few days of any year are full of reviews of the previous 12 months and looks at what lies ahead. It’s a natural: Nothing much happens after the middle of December – but bloggers need to continue churning out copy.

With that as a rather cynical rationale, let’s take a look at what the immediate future holds for telework. It is certain that it will grow during the next year. The continued popularity of sophisticated mobile devices and the ever-wider deployment of LTE networks – which will reach second and third tier cities — make it a certainty.

It also will be a year in which carriers and service providers start recognizing the size of the telework market and serving it more directly.

We are at a bit of a weird point as 2011 draws to a close. Millions and millions of people telework, and do so on an everyday basis. Even people whose main work life is spent in a corporate office use telework tools on a constant and consistent basis. But, at the same time, relatively little attention is paid to teleworkers as a separate class of workers. There are significant financial, management, security, productivity and other issues that haven’t been tackled fully. Lots of money–in the form of inefficient work processes for teleworkers–is falling through the cracks. The challenges are double, since variations of the same issues exist on wired and wireless networks.

This isn’t surprising. A reality of modern telecommunications is that technology advances so quickly that support infrastructures trail and have to scramble to catch up. A second reality is that use of technology explodes from a trickle to a flood almost over night. People use tools when they want them—not when vendors, service providers or employers tell them them that it is okay.

During the past few years, growing numbers of people have worked outside the office. In 2012, vendors and service providers will continue the hard but lucrative work of developing service models to support these folks. Efforts at herding teleworking cats already are evident in disciplines such as telecom expense management, wireless expense management and mobile device management. Progress will accelerate this year.

A good example of the uneven evolution of technology and the infrastructure to support it is open source software. Linux has existed for years. At the beginning, though, actually using it required an advanced degree from MIT. The challenge of the user interface has been met—and the revolution of Android and other feature-rich and easy-to-use platforms followed.

The point is that a lot of money will be made by the vendors and service providers that create drive the inefficiencies out of telework and make it easy for IT departments and employees to use. Look for this to be a top level item during 2012.