Last November, I was a keynote speaker and panelist at the excellent i2 Summit conference in Zürich, Switzerland, and during the day's closing panel, a fellow panelist disagreed with me rather vehemently about the use of content management systems on mobile devices.

I had made the case that mobile-enabled user interfaces for content management systems -- ones that allow you to pull up a content management system on a mobile device to maintain your web site, documents, or other digital assets -- was a very real and current way of managing content. My fellow panelist, however, thought no one was going to be bothered managing enterprise content on their mobile device.

What is a "Mobile" Device?

But then came the light bulb moment. During my presentation just prior to the panel, I had shown screen shots of various flavors of content and digital asset management systems -- SharePoint, MediaBeacon, and Sitecore to name a few -- from what I labelled mobile devices, including iPads. My fellow panelist, however, did not consider an iPad a "mobile device." She thought I was referring just for "smartphones."

Now, for all the times I've wanted to use my MacBook Air's "monitor" as a touch screen, or pulled out a keyboard when using an iPad, I didn't want to start a taxonomic argument over whether an iPad should be categorized as a "mobile device" or a "small laptop." We instead ended up debating whether or not people really use iPads for work. Given my focus on the DAM industry, and doing so much work with creative agencies, museums, gaming companies, and large consumer brands, these days I see more people using iPads for work tasks than people who don't. In the Swiss banking or insurance sector, obviously, it's a bit of a different story.

A New Take on Mobilized Information Management

Still, it's interesting to consider content management interfaces in the context of devices that are now almost all mobile to some degree. Despite all the chatter about responsive design as it applies to consumer-facing web sites, it rarely comes up in the context of operating a WCXM or DAM system.

That needs to change.  We've taken some steps by including mobile usability as part of our evaluation criteria in our WCXM and DAM research, and I can report that vendors are all over the map here.

DAM vendor MediaBeacon, an early trumpeter of HTML5, does a nice job of adapting their user experience. Go from the web browser of your laptop to your iPad to your phone, and the widget-based interface adapts rather well, gracefully degrading in functionality (a necessary evil, many would say) while maintaining its utility. Other vendors take an app-based approach, and many a SharePoint integrator has developed a custom mobile or hybrid app for the device of choice for a client.

What You Should Do

In the BYOD enterprise, content management interfaces of all kinds will need to apply responsive design techniques so users can move more easily from device to device, wherever they may be and whatever device they have on hand. How we classify the device isn't important -- but being able to manage content on it is.

As a buyer or end-user of these systems, be sure to understand your requirements and use case scenarios for your content managers on the move. It may make or break the adoption of your system.

As always, let us know if we can help.