As smartphones and other mobile devices swarm workplaces around the world, they’re generating vast amounts of valuable data that can help businesses operate more efficiently, productively and profitably. Here’s a look at some of the most important emerging mobility data applications:

• Tracking User Behavior
Armed with the visibility offered by a mobility management platform, managers can begin to benchmark elements of worker productivity. As Getting Things Done author David Allen says, mobile tools give everyone instant access to huge amounts of information that only the C-Suite used to see. What managers and employees do with that information determines productivity. Read More.

• Controlling “Bad Spend”
User behavior data can also expose “bad spend” — the salesman who incurs voice overages every month, the IT guy who leaves hundreds of minutes on the table, or the exec who gets charged for roaming whenever he goes abroad. Essentially it’s any place where the company’s expenditure isn’t optimized to fit the users’ needs. Mobile spending needn’t be a one-size-fits-all proposition. Read More.

• Predicting Future Costs
The mobile devices themselves aren’t particularly important when it comes to mobile management. Rather, it’s the data they access and provide. And the costs associated with mobility are skyrocketing. Companies employing a reactive, rather than a proactive, approach to mobile management are likely to get broadsided by the “bill shock” that accompanies increased mobile video downloading and Web browsing. Read More.

• Creating Combined Data Opportunities 
Most mobile users mostly just access their email, the Web, an online calendar, and their contact information. But combining that data with other pieces of information like GPS location or mobile capabilities like near-field communications, “augmented reality,” or geofencing, can lead to the development of entirely new business opportunities — or, as mobile analyst Maribel Lopez calls them, “right-time experiences.” Read More.

• Fleshing Out Big Data
The sheer volume of data transmitted by mobile phones and tablets, and the rich nature of that information — where, when, and how work is getting done — makes mobility an ideal operation for deep analysis. Mobile expenditure should not simply be another line on an expense sheet. The data can be used to analyze user behavior, productivity, work-flow processes and more. Read More.

More: Just What Is ‘Mobility Intelligence’?

Image via FBI.gov.