Leader: Are you flexible yet?

This week's iForum event in Edinburgh put flexible working in the spotlight. Now that is no surprise given it is a Citrix event and Citrix is all about platform access and access management.

Nor is it surprising that the company will tell anybody who will listen that they should be adopting flexible working methods. But speak to the admittedly 'on message' customers here and it's clear they - and other flexible work evangelists - now have an unshakably solid case.

Take the social services IT manager who saw the foolishness of staff completing a document by hand on site visits and then returning to the office and duplicating each field entry on their desktop application.

Double the work for half the results - given lost time to travel and stress - is not exactly a business model anybody should still foster.

And with the kind of data transferred by social services, they really wouldn't do it if it wasn't secure.

There's another great use on the verge of being announced which will really benefit community workers and disadvantaged kids in the north of England, too.

Let's not kid ourselves that these contract wins are filed under corporate and social responsibility - a deal is a deal - but they are understandably the cases companies like Citrix are keen to put to the fore.

But white collar businesses also stand to benefit if they can shake off the culture of fear and overcome the concern of added short-term workload in effecting the change to flexible working.

Mark Templeton, CEO of Citrix, even distanced himself from his own agenda to concede whichever solution companies go for, they can no longer claim remote and flexible working is cost-prohibitive.

"It's not only not cost-prohibitive but companies should also see they are making money back," he said.

One customer even claims to have saved back all their investment simply by being able to get all staff online remotely when heavy snow kept everybody away from the office. Such stories are far from unique to Citrix - don't let this be mistaken for a vendor-specific issue - it's a business issue, and a pressing one at that.

Companies have to realise with flexible working they can save money, motivate staff and increase productivity.