Enterprises increasingly aspire to mobile-enable the digital workplace. But how effectively can employees access social and collaboration applications from mobile devices today?

RSG’s 2014 survey reveals that there is still a long way to go.

Currently, communication-oriented applications have become the most mobile-enabled, and not surprisingly email tops that list. The subsequent top mobile applications are employee directory (presumably to look up contact details to call your colleagues) and instant messaging.

Only slightly more than a third of the organizations mobile-enable their social and collaboration applications, such as discussion forums and central document repositories. Beyond the challenges of smaller screen sizes lie security concerns that may limit access here. In any case, less than a tenth of the respondents report that they their enterprise social networks are effectively available via the mobile devices. (Note: micro-enterprises of less than 20 employees were excluded from the results.)

As I note in an earlier blog, enterprises may not be effectively exploiting the potential of mobile social networks.

Overall, it appears that mobile in the enterprise remains more about communication and less about collaboration. And it’s definitely early days for mobile social networks.

RSG Collaboration & Social Technology stream subscribers can download a detailed report with narrative analysis, recommendations, and numerous charts.

Non-subscribers can obtain the summary results here.