Enterprise mobility is not new. With rise of app stores and tablet computing, however, the mobile application landscape has changed dramatically from the days of yore. And that spells opportunity for enterprise mobility.

“While enterprises have for some time applied this knowledge in their design of customer-facing content or services, they haven’t explored the power of mobile to engage internal audiences as much,” noted Wesley Lynch in a blog post earlier today. “Mobile can help drive consumption of corporate content and increase participation in organizational processes among all audiences – external as well as internal.”

Thoughtful enterprise mobile apps can increase enterprise workforce participation, suggested Lynch. “Enterprise mobility has had a long history, but it has never been as compelling as with apps.”

Leveraging enterprise apps, enterprises can extend existing applications or create new bespoke applications to further automate enterprise processes.

Apps also can present new opportunities for automating core processes such as insurance assessment.

“Another example of an industry that could make innovative internal use of mobile apps is the car rental sector,” wrote Lynch. “An app for processing vehicle returns could combine damage diagrams and pictures with a picture and digital signature of the person returning the vehicle, with huge potential for fast-tracking contract finalization.”

Tablets with barcode scanners can be used by staff in any number of industry applications, such as fleet management or retail applications, also to further current applications.

“Sometimes mobile comes into play where the working environment precludes easy deployment of computing infrastructure,” he noted, and enterprise apps can fill the void. Airline ground crews can be outfitted with tablets that make their jobs easier, for instance, even though they are in an environment not managed by the employer.

Less cutting edge but perhaps even more useful, apps also can be used as an internal content delivery mechanism. Training videos can be disseminated via a private channel on a public app, for instance, reducing the need for the corporate intranet.

“Earlier incarnations of mobile enterprise applications were merely repurposed desktop applications. Clumsy and unappealing, their low uptake was predictable,” noted Lynch.

“Mobile apps, by contrast, are written from the ground up with lavish, dynamic graphical interfaces featuring whole new levels of user interaction,” he added. “Consequently public mobile apps stand out for their pleasurable experience –ease of use and visual appeal – as much as for their rich functionality.”