The Future of Mobile Office Automation Services2021.03.15

At present, mobile OA is very hot in China, and the Internet service providers and software companies have entered the mobile OA service market. This article will pour cold water on this fire, because both users and capital need to calmly think about what kind of mobile office automation services do users need?

Baidu Wiki describes mobile OA like this: mobile OA or 3A Office, which means that office staff can handle anything related to business at anytime and anywhere. This new office automation model allows office workers to get rid of the constraints of time and space and use mobile OA apps to establish the interconnection between their mobile phones and computers, and seamlessly handle office business in the office and out of the office. Carry out portable office management and communication at any time, effectively improve management efficiency, promote the improvement of government service quality and the growth of enterprise management efficiency.

"This new office automation model" is portrayed very cutting-edge and very tempting! However, when I saw the above description of mobile OA service, I immediately felt that this application scenario seemed familiar! Yes, it is the email service that many companies use every day! The email service has been invented for 50 years, but it has not been widely used in China because the instant messaging service (chat) was launched at the same time when the email service introduced to Chinese market. The ease of use has made instant messaging popular and has a trend to replace email.

On the other hand, in the European and American markets, since email is the first application of the Internet, email has been widely used. This means people have been using the so-called "new office automation model" every day now. An example is all company executives handed a BlackBerry to receive emails as early as 20 years ago.

The author wrote two blog posts on "The Future of Client Software" and "The Future of Cloud Computing and Cloud Services" last month. So, I simply named this article as “The Future of Mobile Office Automation Service” as a series of articles on "The Future of", because mobile office automation is indeed the general trend of office automation in the future, but how to take the road in the future requires everyone who has already participated in this market and planned to participate in this market to think about it.

The author believes that when choosing mobile office automation solutions and service providers, we must carefully consider the following three aspects.

1. Can privacy be effectively protected?
   Whether the mobile office automation service fully considers the trend that people will attach great importance to privacy protection in the future, even if some users may not care now. But because office automation services not only involve employees’ private information, but also have a large amount of business secrets. If the solution can’t protect confidential information effectively, even if this service is very popular now, and have a large number of users, but once a confidential privacy information leak case occurs one day, it will immediately be a fire and ice, and it may be a disaster.
   The current popular mobile office automation services are basically cloud service models. A large amount of employee privacy information and organization confidential information are hosted in a system beyond the control of the organization. How can we effectively protect the personal privacy of employees and the business secrets, this is a major issue that the CIO/CTOs must first consider at the solution choice stage.
2. Is it a decentralized solution?
   All future applications will be decentralized applications, and mobile office automation will not be out of class. Nowadays, all mobile office automation services are highly centralized services, whether it can meet the needs of future development depends on whether the service provider can continuously improve and develop towards a decentralized service model.
3. Can it be connected to the existing office automation system, and is it easy to deploy and use?
   This is also an important factor that must be considered. It must be able to meet the needs of working in the office and out of office at the same time. It cannot be working in office but also must use the mobile phone to complete the office automation. And if the mobile office automation is to clock in at work, office approval, and act as a work pusher for employees, it is really not worth using! In order to use such a little function, it is not worth losing valuable employee privacy and business secrets!

Readers may ask whether the author has any recommended mobile office automation solutions that are worth having. Of course, we can't just say that they are not good, we should provide readers with valuable reference information for choosing mobile office automation services. Please go to the following paragraph.

The above are problems, and of course there are solutions to these problems. The author believes that encrypted email service is the best mobile office automation service for four reasons:

1. Encrypted email service can effectively protect personal privacy and business secrets.
   Government agencies, enterprises and individuals in European and American countries, as well as some large enterprises in China, have always used email to work, because who to send an email to, and to whom to copy to, is the same process for office approval as who to review and copy to whom! With the popularization of the mobile Internet, mobile phones can send and receive emails, which can be understood that the email client app in the mobile phone is a mobile office automation software. The only thing that needs to be improved is that the current email system is cleartext transmission and cleartext storage in mail server, which must be improved to end-to-end email encrypted transmission and encrypted storage. Only encrypted emails can meet the requirements of mobile office automation for the protection of personal privacy and business secrets.
   But the current mobile office automation services in the market are all cloud service models. How these important data related to confidential information is stored in the cloud, whether it is used by an unrelated third party, and whether it is possible to leak the secrets are all unknown and uncontrollable to the users. If you use encrypted email for office automation, you can ensure the security of confidential information, whether you build your own mail server or use the cloud email service, because the confidential office information has been encrypted with a digital certificate when it is generated, and it is encrypted in the transmission and stored in cipher text in the mail server, and only the recipient can decrypt and read, which can effectively prevent the leakage of confidential office information.
2. The encrypted email service is a truly decentralized application.
   Email has been a decentralized application without a central node since its invention. People don’t need to rely on the centralized service of a certain service provider. As long as there is an email client software and an email account, mobile office automation can be realized. It is said that reliable mobile office automation can be realized at zero cost.
3. The office work mode is not changed, no additional training is required, and it is very convenient to deploy and use.
   If the employees are working based on email now, only needs to replace the existing email client software with encrypted email client software to realize encrypted email service, which can realize encrypted mobile office automation and ensure the security of mobile office confidential information. At the same time, employees do not need any additional training, nor do they need to purchase any server. They still use the existing email service, and employees can realize email encryption without big changes, thus realizing encrypted mobile office automation. The use of encrypted email services to achieve mobile office automation can seamlessly cover office computer work and out of office work, and there will be no situation where only mobile apps can be used for office work.
4. Adopt digital signature technology to completely solve the legal effect of office approval signature.
   This is currently not provided by all mobile office automation services in the market. The legal effect of the office approval, whether it can be denied, can only be solved by digital signature technology. The encrypted email service provides email digital signature service and email timestamp service by default. These reliable technical means can ensure that the identity of the approver is trusted, and the approval behavior is legally effective in accordance with the electronic signature law, and cannot be forged or denied, and the email timestamp service also ensures that the approval time is trusted, non-forgery and non-repudiation.

If the approved document needs to be finally released to the employees or released to the public, it can be digitally signed and timestamped after the approver completes the approval, to ensure that the released document is trusted and cannot be illegally tampered with and has legal effect.

The reader may ask questions again. Yes, encrypted email service is good, but email encryption is not an easy task. The current market solution requires users to apply for a email certificate from the CA and then laboriously configure the use of the certificate, as well as the issue of exchanging public keys, etc., whether is there a mail encryption service that is very easy to implement?

The answer is yes, if you read this article on the MeSign.com website, you must already know something about MeSign email encryption. This is the first and unique solution in the world that realizes automatic email encryption and digital signature using S/MIME technology. Encrypted emails are as easy to use as ordinary cleartext emails. You only need to download MeSign App, configure your email account, then you can automatically send encrypted emails immediately, and you can immediately implement encrypted mobile office automation, and there is a free edition that can be used for free trial.

In short, good prospects for mobile office automation, and the solution selection needs to be cautious! The protection of privacy comes first, and encrypted email is the first choice. Choose MeSign for email encryption!