How does the mobile device impact the business process? Is it something that can bring a real return, or is it best quarantined from the rest of the enterprise? Mobile phones and tablets are rapidly replacing manual and paper-based processes in all sorts of businesses and the pace is increasing. Kendall Watt, solutions specialist at Mimecast, says it’s starting to become ubiquitous.

“We’re seeing our suppliers using mobile devices and not necessarily just PDAs and phones, but full devices to track goods and signing procedures, and they’re plugging straight back into the SAP or other line-of-business systems in the backend. We discussed this trend a good few years ago but we weren’t quite seeing it yet then. Now I see it every single day: someone arrives from a courier, you sign for the goods on the device and off he goes. It’s no longer paper-based.”