Getting the hardware right at the very start is important. Choosing between laptops or smart devices is the just the tip of the iceberg. You'll need to consider how efficiently you want your mobile office to function before you make your purchase decision.

This could mean exploring devices like mobile printers, power cords, chargers, payment processors and GPS. Take a look at your day-to-day business and put yourself in the shoes of your staff to determine what tools they will need to stay connected to the office and clients while on the go without compromising on performance.

Making sure you are always connected is critical if you are going to make the mobile office concept work for you. The idea of sitting in a coffee shop with free WiFi sounds good, but if you don’t have a stable connection to do business, you will waste valuable time. Investing in 4G Mobile Broadband or tethering with a mobile plan with large data allowance will provide a more reliable and secure service than simply hoping for the best with public networks.

Having the ability to work on email and documents regardless of location is important for day-to-day operations in any business. Investing in a collaboration solution like Microsoft 365 will give you access to business-grade email and software options that ensure your business is always online.

With Microsoft 365, you will have access to cloud versions of Office applications (Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook) from your smartphone, tablet or laptop, meaning that you can work at any time, at any place, on a device of your choice.

Employee communication and collaboration is simple with HD video conferencing (with Skype), instant messaging and emails. OneDrive gives businesses 1TB of storage to share and work on documents anywhere and everywhere. When it comes to malware threats, Microsoft 365's antivirus and spam protection keep your mobile workforce and important documents safe. 

Having a mobile office means that you are vulnerable to data loss from misplacement or theft of devices. Mitigate your risk by:

• Ensuring passwords on your devices are at least at least eight characters long with a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. For smart devices, a biometric password would be ideal.
• You should also consider a physical laptop lock, to stop anyone from stealing devices.
• Enable tracking functions like "Find my Mac" and "Find my Device", which are turned off by default, so that you can locate your devices remotely.

When it comes to protecting access to your cloud-based software consider a password manager. LastPass and Dashlane generate complex passwords for all your logins and keep them safe in an encrypted database. This can be further strengthened with multifactor authentication, where two forms of authentication are required a login. Usually, it’s a code sent to the employee's phone.

Office telephony is another important consideration. You would want the efficiency of an IP-based Private Branch Exchange (IP PBX) system without constraining your workforce to their landline. Cloud-based phone systems, like Singtel Bizvoice Unified Communications (UC), extend your office phone features to your mobile so your customers still enjoy the convenience of having their queries attended to by the right personnel.

Messaging, conferencing and cost-effective roaming or intra-company calls are all available with the solution, meaning your customers can contact your employees on their smart device at any time through the regular office number, even when they are travelling, improving your customer experience while saving you cost.

The right mobile phone plan is also important. A SIM only plan gives you the flexibility to customise the amount of data and talk time for your employees so you only pay for what you need. There's no contract as well, which means you can quickly change your requirements as employee needs change. 

By opting for a business plan instead of a personal plan for employees, you can choose from specific business plans to give you more data and phone call options as well as add-ons covering overseas roaming, local data boosts and mobile security.