To buy or not to buy? Both can be valid options when considering to establish a mobile workforce. But it’s good to know that, although a business can share the responsibility of financing and selecting the devices with the employees, the risks always remain company “privilege.”
Policy Advisor
There are three standard options for introducing and working with mobile devices in the workplace, depending on who owns and operates the equipment. We break down the advantages and disadvantages and common arguments for each of these.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): The Crowd Pleaser
That is by far the most popular approach to mobilization in the workplace, and with security measures improving, the adoption will be more widespread by the hour. North America leads the way where about 50% of companies have adopted a BYOD policy. More cautiously, but Western European companies are also becoming open to such a concept, although corporate accounts still owned the majority (61%) of business smartphones in 2015. With the abundance of devices out there and the convenience they mean to employees, however, the BYOD trend is only likely to gain more ground.
For small businesses, the cost-savings achievable with such a policy are too tempting. The employee buys the hardware itself. The voice and data service costs are billed to their names. The business doesn’t have to sign long and inconveniently binding contracts with carriers. In a recent report, Cisco estimated a USD 350 of savings for every employee, every year, for every business with a BYOD-policy in place.
Of course, properly managing the secure and steady operation of these devices and the corporate apps them is an ongoing challenge. Businesses, especially the ones with fewer resources, need to educate themselves on the security and troubleshooting of the used devices.
Choose Your Own Device (CYOD): The Golden Middle
A relatively new twist to the BYOD-concept is CYOD, or Choose Your Own Device, that aims to improve the control the IT-departments have over the corporate mobile security. With CYOD, the ownership of the device is a secondary question. Companies choosing this policy give priority to creating a more homogenous fleet of devices by presenting a set of options for the employees to choose from. This way, they can better control the support and security of these devices.
CYOD definitely puts some financial burden on the corporation as it has to create a budget for the purchase of some devices. The corporate purchasing process also makes the implementation times longer than BYOD. But if the employee already owns an approved type of device, it is cost saving already. Not to mention the other positive consequence of such a policy: engagement that comes from the possibility of choosing a device that suits the worker.
Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE): The Ultimate Control
Regardless of the apparent advantages of the above mentioned two policies, a corporate-owned mobile fleet is still the standard at large firms. Why? It would be too much to keep an eye on all the issues that stem from the variety of mobile gadget types.
The very existence of a mobile fleet in a large corporation automatically induces the necessity of mobile device management and a mobile app management system in place, but at least these solutions don’t have to deal with different operating systems, a thousand different sets of apps, and the same amount of security vulnerabilities.
As for cost savings, supplier contracts can be negotiated en mass and based on quantity and make all those services (data, repairs, etc.) a little less expensive. The fleet contracts, on the other hand, have the drawback of being binding even when the technology or the service level should be updated.
Role-based Selection: The Pragmatic
Many times, it’s not even about the costs or the security that defines the options for the mobilization of the workforce, rather than the role of the workers. In certain positions, like in construction or at utilities, it is a requirement that a mobile device is resistant to environmental impacts: hence the category of ruggedized tablets and mobiles.
Other times, the expectations that drive such purchases are more subtle. It can be the case of personal banking sales agents making a better impression by presenting on an iPad than on an Android device. It can be that real estate agents continuously need to take high-resolution photos or retailers have to have a versatile barcode-reader available at all times, and these functions might all prompt the use of specific devices.
“How Do We Pay For It?”
As far as company-owned devices go, laptops still lead the way over real mobility enablers like smartphones or tablets. But the fact that corporations mainly spend on laptops doesn’t mean the other devices are not widely used – they are just mostly purchased and owned by the employees.
Once the company has decided that a CYOD or COPE policy is the way to go, it has to deal with more sweet little details and the time-consuming nature of purchasing.
Financing options are not as many as the devices on the market, but with a frugal approach, businesses tend to make savvier decisions. Moreover, price sometimes is of lower importance to companies that have to consider so many factors, many of them industry-specific. Software support or repairs and replacement, for examples, can make or break a deal.
However, to reach an acceptable price, businesses more often sign long-term contracts with device suppliers and service providers. Phones with SIM cards that tie them to a fixed provider have also been the standard for the business sector, and that’s only started to change recently.
So what do purchasing departments consider when planning the budget for mobilization? First, they set the priorities: whether it’s a particular type of device, network availability, low monthly fee, or high amount of data.
Other than spending a specific amount of the budget on devices as a one-time purchase, they can be leased to the company and forwarded to the workers as COPE. Another option is to sign a hardware compensation agreement with the employees within CYOD and give a certain amount of allowance for hardware purchases.
Next comes the service level setting: depending on the provider, data usage, warranty and servicing options, support availability, and flexible modifications choices might have an impact on the monthly service price.
So Many Devices, So Long Deployment
The deployment of a mobile fleet will depend on the first policy option a company has chosen.
BYOD takes off the business’ shoulders a considerable task: selecting (and paying for) the devices. And puts there another: the management. With the workers, all using their mobile gadgets, the deployment of a mobility strategy is about finding a common ground to manage all of those tools. Establishing the basic rules of usage and secure corporate identity with role-specific access for the employees is the first step. In fact, it also a must in creating a safe and controlled mobile environment. Device management can then be fine-tuned by adding dedicated support or other services.
Putting mobile device management (MDM) in place is a way to make sure lost or stolen gadgets or using not secure apps don’t lead to corporate data leakage. One step further, an enterprise mobility management (EMM) tool also creates a secure environment for system and app updates. The point is to keep the onboarding process as simple as possible for the employees, to be able to profit from it.
CYOD requires the same approach when deploying: having a go-to place for administration and control of security, with the facilitation of having fewer device types to manage. From a deployment perspective, a COPE model is the easiest yet also the longest. The IT department has a massive heads-up by knowing what devices, what operating systems, and what apps they have to keep an eye on. They can do all installations and security settings in bulk. They can make sure everything is working before the employees even get the devices. And they only have to be prepared to maintain a public pool of tools.
Thoroughness Pays Off
Making purchasing decisions is hard and, in the case of mobility, it ultimately comes down to how much the company is willing to pay for security. Or, how much of that security is it willing to sacrifice for being among the first to mobilize.
For large corporations, it is not even a question if they allocate a budget for the control of their mobile fleet. But this budget should be completed with the awareness of the latest technology worth investing in and the management options that make the everyday operations of the mobile workforce safe for the company.
