Millions of professionals and students use their iPad for much more than a round of Angry Birds or a Netflix fix.

The App Store also houses tens of thousands of productivity and business-based apps, many of which can help you get your work done on your tablet.

In case you missed the free giveaway a few weeks ago, Picsel’s Smart Office 2 is a $10 software suite for iOS that lets you view, create, edit and share Microsoft Office files (all versions since 1997), as well as support for PDFs.

It’s half the cost of QuickOffice HD Pro, doesn’t require an Internet connection like CloudOn (though there is some cloud support) and there’s no monthly fee, as is the case with OnLive Desktop. The app is also more versatile than Apple’s own standalone apps for word processing (Pages), spreadsheets (Numbers) and presentations (Keynote).

While there were a couple of random issues with the app, this handy productivity tool works very well for the most part.

Launch Smart Office 2 and you’ll see two main ways to look at your documents:

• The Explore tab opens up any files stored on your tablet (in the default My Documents folder) or one of two cloud services at this time (Google Docs and Dropbox). Once you’re looking at your documents stored on or off the tablet, you can choose to see the files alphabetically, by date, file size or by type of document (segregated by .doc, .xls, .ppt and .pdf). The app also supports newer .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files.

• The Timeline tab is a visually appealing look at the last few documents you worked on, in chronological order. But instead of the files listed by file name and type, you see a thumbnail view of your recent work for easy access. Simply tap the image to bring it up full-screen, for editing, printing or sharing.

Smart Office 2 lets you create a Microsoft Office-compatible document from scratch or view and edit an existing one brought onto your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Along with cloud support, you can also open up attachments in an email (“Open In”) or drag and drop files over when connected to a PC or Mac (from within iTunes).

Along with support for Adobe PDF, the app also lets you view image files, plain text and other files. You can share your documents via cloud service, email in original format (or export as PDF) or wirelessly print your work with built-in support for thousands of wireless printers from 34 manufacturers, says Picsel.

Whether you’re working on a .doc, .xls or .ppt file, the interface is clean and effective – in portrait or landscape view. When you need to pull up some tools, simply tap near the top of the screen for a list of options. Tapping on a word brings up additional options, such as highlighted desired text, formatting and colour options, adding (or taking) photos to the document, and more. Press and hold on the screen to zoom in or out on the text, copy and paste text from other apps or take advantage of the “Undo” button for mistakes.

Curiously, I couldn’t find a spell-checker when in a word processing document, and animated transition effects didn’t appear to be working in an imported PowerPoint presentation -- but these seemed to be the only main shortcomings.

Smart Office 2 also provides a number of document templates – whether you’re writing a professional letter or creating an attractive presentation. There’s also a slideshow mode if you want to use your iPad to view or control your presentation – and even an option to view your slideshow (or regular documents) in stereoscopic 3D for those wearing supported glasses.

Despite a few minor issues, which could be remedied in a future update, this comprehensive suite of Microsoft Office-supported programs is worth the price of admission.

Any who travels for business can probably relate to the pains of mobile connectivity: finding a Wi-Fi hotspot to get online with your laptop, paying through the nose for high-speed access at your hotel or risking a data breach because of a cleverly disguised rogue network at the airport.

Instead, many computer-using Canadians are opting to bring their own wireless connection with them – in the form of a “Mobile Internet Stick” that snaps into an available USB port on your laptop.

Not only are these small accessories ideal for those who don’t want to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot – because it’s cellular, you can even get online in the back of a moving taxi or on a park bench – but you’re not putting your data at risk by cyber-snoopers who prey on users of public Wi-Fi networks.

I’ve been spending time with the impressive Huawei E397 4G LTE Mobile Internet Key, an ultra high-speed solution that works on the Telus Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in major Canadian cities; theoretical download speeds top 100 megabits per second. In areas without support for LTE devices, the Internet Key falls to Dual Carrier HSPA+ (up to 42 Mbps downloads), HSPA+ (up to 21 Mbps downloads) or regular 2G/3G bands following that.

Faster speeds -- which might even exceed your home or office broadband connection -- mean you can engage in videoconferencing, download large files in mere seconds, stream content smoothly or access data in the cloud so quickly it’s as if the files were stored locally. (Anecdotally, I also let my kids stream Netflix movies while in the back seat of the car.)

This small, black Mobile Internet Key (93 x 35 x 15 mm) can be rotated once it’s plugged into your laptop’s USB port, to position it vertically, horizontally or even diagonally.

Setup is a breeze. Simply snap off the cover to insert the SIM card, plug it into the Windows or Mac laptop and the built-in Huawei Connection Manager software begins installing the necessary drivers. After a few seconds, you can access the Internet by clicking the “Connect” button. That’s it! A green LED light on the unit confirms connectivity to the Telus network.

This Mobile Internet Key also has a slot for a microSD card, if desired, to add up to 32GB of external memory to your laptop. No power is needed to use the key as it uses the computer’s power to operate the Internet stick.

The Huawei E397 4G LTE Mobile Internet Key is sold for $149.99 with no term -- or $0 on a 3-year plan, $49.99 on 2-year plan or $99.99 on 1-year plan. Data plans vary, but you can learn about monthly costs by clicking here.

Hi, I am Doc Wallace, Managing Director of Fifth Quadrant Research.  Last week Ken Redekop wrote a blog post on Improving Customer Experience in a Consumer Empowered Economy based on a study by Fifty Quadrant.   In the coming months I will share my insight into this study on how consumer contact preferences are evolving with the rise in adoption of mobile devices and social media, and provide tips your business can implement to prepare for this evolution.

The series will begin with a discussion on the cost of providing customer service through various channels. In the second blog I will explore the emerging customer service channels of Social Media and Mobile Apps and hear from a social media hero, Dave Carroll who wrote the ‘United Breaks Guitars’ song which resulted in United Airlines losing 10% share value. In our third and final blog I will bring it all together and share with you how to design and implement a Multi-channel Customer Service Strategy.

So what is “The Consumer Empowered Economy” and why should it be important to you?

In today’s economy, we are seeing the balance of power shifting from the organization to the consumer, a trend we term, The Consumer Empowered Economy. Consumers are demanding more ways to interact with you so it’s imperative to start thinking about how you deliver customer service. There are many channels that exist today:

1. Voice – call and contact centre
   
2. Face-to-face – store, branch, office, shop
   
3. Online – web forms, applications, etc
   
4. Correspondence – letter, fax, email
   
5. Social Media – online interactive dialogue
   
6. Mobile – smart phone mobile apps and SMS
   

Within these channel categories there are at least 19 ways to interact with an organization so deciding the best approach for your business can quickly get overwhelming.   To that end, I invite you to attend an interactive webinar series on the Consumer Empowered Economy that will deep dive into the following topics:

• Webinar 1 - Tuesday May 10 – The Cost of Business as Usual
  
• Webinar 2 - Thursday May 31 - Customer Service through Social Media and Mobile Devices
  
• Webinar 3 - Tuesday June 19  - The Multi-Channel Customer Service Roadmap
  

Register to attend “The Consumer Empowered Economy’ webinar series.

Looking forward to sharing my insight with you and hearing what you think about how the Consumer Empowered Economy is changing your business.

Doc Wallace

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Dr Wallace is a Customer Service Futurist, Academic and Business Owner of Fifth Quadrant Pty Ltd, a Service Strategy & Research company, callcentres.net Pty Ltd, an online publishing business and ACA Research, a full service market research firm. Dr Wallace has a PhD in Organisational Behaviour, is Adjunct Faculty at the Australian Business School, is the author of The Complete Guide to Call & Contact Centre Management, has a strong following of her blogs ‘Your Call’ and ‘Devil Wears Grey’. Dr Wallace is one of the world’s most cited commentators on customer service trends.

Big data and data analytics are rapidly changing business, open government and citizen services, security and privacy. Whether it’s easily mapping a bus route using Google Maps thanks to open access to data provided by your local transit provider, discovering correlations between magnesium deficiencies and migraines, or uncovering a breach in your organization’s security infrastructure, big data is here to stay and will have dramatic impacts on us in the future.

But what is Big Data? The core aspects of big data to consider are that:

(a) It is increasingly easy to gather, store and manage very large datasets
(b) Using data analytics and correlation engines we can extract value from these datasets in ways to drive new opportunities
(c) If you can do it for good, others can do it for evil

Big data and data correlation are being used for good in a number of ways. Have you recently had a credit card cancelled by the issuer without reporting fraud yourself? Most people are not aware that the majority of credit card related breaches are not discovered by the consumer, merchant or transaction processor, but by Visa, Mastercard and American Express. Those three companies have huge datasets and correlation capabilities that enable them to see patterns in fraud and relate them back to the specific sources of a breach, usually becoming aware of these problems before the troubled organizations. Gathering more data, and finding ways to sift through that data is incredibly important to the future of security.

In the Enterprise, we see security event and incident management tool (SEIM) deployments as the front line of this approach. By aggregating system logs and looking for anomalies, and over time being able to sort out the wheat from the chaff, an organization is able to take a more effective stance as it relates to security events. Often, when organizations have failed to put effective logging techniques in place, it is nearly impossible to actually determine the source or cause of a breach, infection or data loss. But when the tools are in place and properly used, over time organizations are able to become more aware of when incidents are occurring as they occur, and reduce the impact and spread of events, thus the costs associated with them. The Rotman survey we do annually shows that organizations who invest in log and SIEM tools consistently experience improved security outcomes.

However, the bad guys also have access to these same tools. In addition to the huge databases of stolen credit card numbers and other personal information available on the web for small change, criminals are increasingly using big data techniques to correlate individual pieces of information on victims into richer profiles, which can be sold for higher values. Bringing together a credit card number with address, name, date of birth and mother’s maiden name results in a much richer profile for an identity thief to wreak havoc. Researchers have also used data correlation techniques to bring together public voting records, land records, anonymized health care studies and social security or insurance numbers to reveal information that was never intended.

If your organization is responsible for verifying identity in order to establish credit, provide access to resources, sell services or other reasons, it is important to keep in mind how easy, and cheaply this information can be gathered for malicious purposes, and develop effective countermeasures to prevent fraud. That fraud has costs both to your organization and the individuals who suffer the identity theft.

So, keep in mind the value of data, how easily it can be gathered, tools available for analysis, and find ways to use it for your advantage and to offset the risks to your organization.

Michael Argast, TELUS Security Solutions

Improving your customer experience requires the incorporation of new forms of customer interactions into your business strategies and processes. But how do you know where to start?  Forrester research summarized a recent Fifth Quadrant in-depth study that surveyed 1,000 consumers across the US and Canada to better understand how consumer contact preferences are evolving with the rise in consumer adoption of mobile devices and social media.  This report identifies key areas to hone in on in order to offer customers better service with every interaction. Not only does this Forrester research report give you a bird’s eye view into what your customers contact preferences are but it also provides tips how enterprises can boost their multichannel capacity and achieve higher levels of consumer satisfaction, both now and in the future.

Below are the top two things I think are the most relevant within this study, click here for the full report

1. Consumers want access to a wider range of contact channels, indicating there are opportunities for organizations to improve the level of customer service delivered. While much has been said about how self-service channels, such as the web, will reduce calls to a customer support center, our analysis of the Fifth Quadrant research shows that there has been an increase in consumers preferring access to a wider range of ways to interact with the companies they do business with across both self-service and agent-assisted channels. Short of the automated voice systems, the research shows that consumers like the diversity of contact channels across the board.
   
2. Social media reinforces the imperative for a multichannel strategy. Managers of enterprise customer support centers are struggling with social media interactions because currently the volume is small as compared to voice interactions. But a focus on volume misses the point. It’s not about the volume, it’s about the impact.
   

At the end of the day customers’ needs are changing, and you want to evolve with them.  I hope this report helped you start to think about your Customer Experience strategy.

If you want more information we are hosting in partnership with Fifth Quadrant Research a 3-part webinar series that will explore “The Consumer Empowered Economy” where these and other findings will be discussed in detail with Dr. Catriona Wallace, Managing Director of Fifth Quadrant Research.  Catriona advises companies on how to respond to the rapidly changing consumer landscape including the rise of new service channels social media and mobile apps.

• Webinar 1 - Tuesday May 10 – The Cost of Business as Usual
  
• Webinar 2 - Thursday May 31 - Customer Service through Social Media and Mobile Devices
  
• Webinar 3 - Tuesday June 19  - The Multi-Channel Customer Service Roadmap
  

Register to attend the  “The Consumer Empowered Economy’ webinar series.

Ken Redekop

Director, Customer Experience Solutions

TELUS

In mid April, the Communications Technology Consultants Association (CTCA) put most of this country’s telecom companies on the hot seat. They invited executives from TELUS, Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, MTS Allstream and Cogeco Data Services to sit on a panel at their annual conference in Kitchener, Ontario. I was honoured to be the TELUS representative.

The subject of our discussion was cloud computing and everything it makes possible – from applications like messaging, collaboration and videoconferencing to true “work anywhere, anytime” capabilities. And the biggest question was the one that came first. Roberta Fox, President and Senior Partner of Fox Group Consulting, told us that her clients still want reassurances that we’re serious about the cloud. Before they put “their hearts and souls into it”, she told us, they want to know that the telecom companies are going to stick with it for the next 8 to 10 years.

Another consultant agreed with her, worrying that as cloud services cut into our legacy products and services, we may start cutting back on the cloud. In other words, are we just dipping our toes in to test the waters, or are we really committed.

I told the panel that as far as TELUS is concerned, we've moved beyond legacy services to offer robust innovative cloud services that leverage our IP networks. My peers agreed. There was a consensus that if we don't offer cloud services, we'll lose clients to others who will – and the cloud is the best way to offer new solutions in place of our legacy services.

One of my peers pointed out that you can't offer the cloud unless you have a network. To me, you need both a reliable network and IT infrastructure for the client to really leverage the cloud. The great news is service providers have extensive knowledge and expertise in offering reliable network based services. In fact, here at TELUS we've been demonstrating an ability to offer cloud-like services for over 100 years. When you think about it, the voice services we all grew up with use a cloud-like structure, with the main applications residing on the network and the clients – the phone sets – accessing them. Then there are services like managed hosting, where we take over the management and monitoring of a client’s servers and they can access their data and applications from anywhere.

As I see it, the real challenge is to make sure that the networks we build for cloud services are as secure, reliable, efficient and scalable as possible. A client has to know that when they connect to the network, it will work, in just the same way you expect dial tone when you pick up the phone. That means end-to-end reliability, from layer 1 right to the application.

Sure, it’s easy to say, but it’s not that easy to do. If your service provider doesn’t get the fundamentals right, nothing will be right. It’s critical to ensure the network continues to offer unmatched reliability and uptime. But you’re probably more interested in the kind of services the cloud makes possible.

At TELUS, we think the big ones are:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), where we provide  computing infrastructure over the network, and manage the computing in our data centres – for example:
  • Managed hosting, where we monitor and manage the client’s servers and/or applications in our data centre
    
• Software as a Service (SaaS), where the application resides on the network, rather than on individual computers or tablets – for example:
  • Collaboration, with services like video conferencing, file sharing and more, making it possible for people to work together no matter where they are
    
• Platform as a Service (PaaS), where we provide the networks, server and storage and our clients use our tools and libraries to create their own applications and deploy them
  

Put all these together, and you’re going to be able to do just about anything on the cloud, even in remote areas.

Interestingly, we’ve found that as we open up our network to the developer community, they’re taking advantage of the opportunity to innovate. We’re seeing all kinds of new applications and we’re noticing how consumer-type services are being adopted and adapted for business use. For example, business social media is breaking down silos between us and our clients and suppliers, and between our clients and their stakeholders.

We also believe that we need to use cloud based collaboration tools like enterprise social media ourselves. Using the cloud in this way demonstrates the value to our clients and allows us to attract the quality workforce we need as they expect to have access to these tools.

So no, this cloud isn’t blowing away, it’s here to stay.  All I can say is the forecast looks terrific.

Lloyd Switzer

SVP-Network Transformation

TELUS

The key mistake most organizations make with employees that bring smartphones and tablets to work is not weighing the risks and not exploring the business opportunities.

This is the second in a three-part series on a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program, the challenges and solutions.  Last week’s post talked about how to start your BYOD program & how your IT department can step up to the challenge.  Today’s post explores the strategies that can help IT meet the varied employee demands while reducing the security risks.

The mobility landscape is changing fast, with many past certainties rendered meaningless as employees and customers increasingly connect their own smartphones and tablets to the corporate network.

And that has budget-stretched IT departments feeling their way in a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) workplace where business opportunities and productivity are up, but so too are data security risks.

Brian Patterson, a consultant with TELUS Managed Mobility Services (MMS), powered by Vox Mobile believes he has a way forward in mobility IT. 
He recommends companies segment their mobile policy according to how different workers, clients and contractors impact the organization, especially when it comes to data security.

An example:  You want executives to be ever-present. But there’s a security risk if they use mobile devices at night, like when they check emails after-hours , Patterson told a session on enterprise mobile programs at the BlackBerry Innovation Forum in Toronto on March 6.

Then there’s non-exempt employees who can’t check their emails after business hours without drawing overtime pay.  
And some governments compel companies to pay for a device and its carrier service costs if an employee checks their emails for business purposes after hours.

Establishing and implementing an enterprise mobility program is also about identifying cost savings.

Patterson recalled recently conducting a mobile program workshop at a Houston company that didn’t consider the cost of a help desk receiving calls.

So it takes seven minutes for the help desk to take down information and send tickets to a support team. Then the support team deals with end-users to answer their questions and solve their problems, he explained.

The problem is the organization didn’t see the help desk as a business cost.

How many calls is the help desk taking? They’re taking 5,000 to 6,000 calls a year, times the employee salaries. These are true costs and they had zero first call resolution, Patterson said.

And a corporate BYOD policy isn’t just about supporting mobile devices. You need to do more than have IT tell employees and customers what devices and apps are supported, and who will service, upgrade or replace devices, especially when they are lost.  To ensure the security of corporate data, you need an effective wipe strategy for lost devices. You need a policy telling employees and executives when they need to call you, and when they need to notify you that they think they lost a device, Patterson argued.  After all, employees won’t bring in a lost device if they haven’t backed it up if there’s a picture of their girlfriend, boyfriend or kids’ birthday party still on the device. They won’t contact you because the device could be wiped, he added.

Many Employees, Many Wants

So different players in an organization have different wants. A CEO will get what devices they want, including a second or third mobile device, at no cost.
But will an organization absorb the mobile costs of sales staff lower down the food chain?  They may need to. Perhaps an employee has a first device, and now wants a second device that they have to pay for, according to your company mobile policy.

But then they lose the first device, and can’t afford a second device to remain accessible by voice or data, whatever the time of day or location.
Without a device, he or she are dead in the water for the company, Patterson argued, leading to productivity loss.

So how do you develop and implement a BYOD mobile strategy that allows employees and customers the freedom to connect their own devices to a corporate network while still ensuring safe and secure access to your corporate data?

Mobility Committee

The answer is forming a mobility committee to get all the right people in a room to focus in and agree on a framework for business-anywhere mobile communications.

As an organization, you need to move from a senior telecom exec owning your mobility program and setting the rules to a cross-functional team across the organization that helps manage and control the mobile policy, Patterson explained.

You also need to recognize that a corporate mobility policy that comes from your committee is not a document.  The (mobile) policy must apply to your organization. The policy is a set of decisions and business rules. How are you going to run your business?  Patterson added.  What’s more, an enterprise mobile strategy that protects corporate data isn’t an off-the-shelf product that can be bolted onto a corporate network.

You can’t buy security. We think security is a set of disciplines, Patterson said.

Now that we’ve considered the concept of a mobility committee, in part three, we'll discuss the challenges of introducing a mobility program in your organization.

Related post:

Part 1: Your mobile IT policy: Its not just a document.  How to kick start your BYOD program.

Etan Vlessing is a Toronto-based business writer.

What strategies has your organization put in place to enable BYOD?  Leave a comment below.

If you're an iOS or Android user, you're likely aware of Read It Later, a popular app that lets you save online content to access at a later time – even offline.

Whether you're on a smartphone, tablet or personal computer, anything found on the web can be saved -- such as websites, recipes, articles or blog posts -- as well as content found inside of apps like Twitter, Pulse, The Onion, Flipboard, Zite and RSS Reader for Outlook.

This tool is also ideal for small businesses, as you can queue up a ton of content to read when it's convenient for you, such as flying from, say, Vancouver to Toronto.

Even images and videos can be saved to your device in the paid ("pro") version of the app, to view offline later on.

Now, four years and 4.5 million users later, Read It Later has a new name – Pocket – and it's completely free to use for Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) and Android devices.

Similar to its predecessor, Pocket lets you save content you like on the web, with a single tap, plus it works inside more than 300 popular apps. Note: there might be some setup required to configure your favourite apps to work with Pocket, but instructions are at the website.

It's not bookmarking, as you don't need an Internet connection to access the content later on, plus Pocket works outside of a web browser, too (thanks to the support of hundreds of apps listed here) and you can access your saved content on multiple devices. Instead, consider it a PVR for any online content you want to check out when you have the time.

Pocket also includes a simplified user interface with fewer toolbars; new filters that let you switch between videos, images and text; and easier to organize content including adding favourites, bulk editing and tagging options to make searching easier.

A few interesting stats about Pocket:

• 50 percent of saved items are viewed on mobile screens (up from 34 percent in January, 2012)

• 40 percent of items saved are not articles – instead they're videos, images, recipes, travel tips and more

• The most popular app for saved content in YouTube, as users are increasingly saving videos for later viewing. If you're curious, here's a list of the most popular videos saved from last week.

Pocket is now available for free at the App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market).