With today’s influx of consumer-oriented smartphones in the workplace, companies are in need of mobile strategists more than ever, admit executives in research sponsored by Visage and conducted by Altimeter to be released Oct. 16.

“We’ve gone from 700 lines of service to over 2,500 lines, across multiple carriers,” says one of several managers interviewed in the report.

According to Altimeter analyst Chris Silva, who led the research, many companies have found themselves in this position yet don’t know how to leverage mobility so that it’s strategic rather than tactical. ”Everyone we spoke with is managing mobile as a sort of second job,” Silva says. “They were hired for Job A, and then added mobility, even if it’s not even really adjacent to their ‘day job.’”

Every company Silva interviewed also reported they either have or are beginning to phase out corporate-issued BlackBerrys that had until recently dominated the enterprise market. ”Once they roll out the iPhones, these companies can use those phones as their phone, their mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, their mobile office,” Silva says. “They can actually streamline the number of things they carry, and start to lower costs.”

But how do executives manage and leverage mobility from there? It starts with visibility, Silva says. The report also notes that companies rolling out mobile management tools are making strides to not only lower the costs of a fully functional mobile program, but also proactively get a handle on issues like application management, disaster management, and bring-your-own-device expense management.

Read the full report.

More: Altimeter’s Chris Silva: Empowering the Mobile Workforce.

Image copyright VisualPhotos.com.