"Mobile Elite" Finds They Must Supply Their Own Tools

“Consumerization,” the trend of employees using personal devices and cloud services for work, not only is widespread, but also shows a trend at work for more than a decade, namely that although “enterprise” information technology traditionally has been more advanced than consumer tools, that now is reversed, in many ways.

A study by Forrester Research suggests that more employees have better technology at home than they have at work. Today, 52 percent of all global workers Forrester Research surveyed, and 62 percent of younger employees, feel that they have better technology at home than at work.

“When we analyzed the data on information workers, we found that a subset of highly connected mobile employees is also using multiple personal devices and applications,” Forrester Research says. Forrester calls this group of employees the “mobile elite.”

“Mobile elite workers are those who make the most intensive use of multiple personally acquired technologies for work and who use them for improving their work with customers and business partners. Those technologies include smartphones, tablets, home computers, and non-authorized software applications and web/cloud services.”

What makes them elite? It starts with their willingness to spend their own money for work: 58 percent  buy the devices and applications that help them to be productive and to collaborate with customers, partners, and other employees, Forrester Research says.

That trend also has been described by other studies.

About 16 percent of respondents pay for their own smart phones used for work. Some eight percent purchased their own tablets and use them for work. Some 35 percent of respondents use their own home computer for work purposes. About 38 perent use software that is not specifically authorized by their employers.

These mobile elite users wind up relying on personally procured technology for work because they need to, not because they just want to, Forrester Research says.

Twenty-seven percent of the information workforce uses two or more personally procured technologies, including personal cloud apps, personal smartphones, tablets, and home computers, to get work done.

Among employees who use unauthorized personal apps and sites, more than half do it to get work done; “because I needed it and my company didn’t provide an alternative,” Forrester Research says.


In fact, one of the reasons some think consumer technology is more important or disruptive than traditional enterprise technology is precisely this transformation of roles. In the past, advanced technology has been adopted first by enterprises, then mid-market firms, then medium and small business and finally consumers.

These days, advanced technology increasingly is created first for consumers, and then adapted for enterprise use.