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.  

The post Top Things to Consider When Purchasing Business Mobile Devices appeared first on Scolvo.

The Millennial generation is often undervalued and/or faced with high expectations: they’re considered lazy, disrespectful, and tech-dependant, while their integration to the workplace is critical for the businesses that want to create a natural succession to their baby-boomer and Gen X workforce.

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Luckily, mobility could be a way to satisfy the needs of both parties and create a meaningful connection between the interests of the business and the people.

Millennials in the Workplace

The Millennials are the people who were born between the early 1980’s to 2000, and they belong to the first digitally native generation. It means there was basically no time in their life without technology so they can’t even imagine work without it.

By the time they grew up and entered the world of work, technology had enabled them to work from anywhere, anytime, and they developed their habits accordingly. As a consequence, flexibility has become their most important workplace value and mobility its natural extension.

However, this mobility also has to be limitless, to be able to work regardless of corporate wifi networks or data plans. Since this generation has grown into using technology, not only habits have formed but also preferences for certain devices and applications. Milllenials would like to use their own devices at work and the same applications they have been using.

Technology at the workplace can be a perk that doubles as a work tool, especially if it allows for wide collaboration (another core value for this generation) and offers a seamless user experience. Millennials don’t want to spend their time on training but they will figure out how to use any new tool to get the most out of the working moments.

Millennials are not as numerous of a generation in Europe as they are in the United States. While there they accounted for 27% of the adult population in 2014, European Millennials only account for 24%, according to data from Pew Research.

Besides, the aging of the population is a serious problem in the developed world: due to low birth rates and increasing life expectancy in Europe, for example, the ratio of the 65+ generation has grown from 16.6% to 18.9% in the last ten years. But while the number of workers can be increased by keeping people out of pension for longer, there is also a need for refreshment and attract the younger generations.

Financial institutions: in desperate need of young talent.

The financial services industry, especially insurance, is a sector stricken by the lack of young employees. In a PwC report, 25% of CEO’s surveyed in the financial services sector said they had to cancel strategic initiatives because of the unavailability of the right people.

It could be due to the eroding reputation of the sector: the above report mentions that 21% of the Millennial respondents don’t want to work in financial services and 12% mentioned insurance specifically as an unattractive industry.

Besides a certain attractiveness of the traditionally flexible work of an agent, workplace technology can be a way to fight this trend. In fact, 66% of Millennials would look at the technology an employer uses when considering a job.

Most of all, it means mobile, as this generation thinks mobile-first and mobile-diverse, equally and appropriately choosing between laptops, tablets, and smartphones depending on the situation.

Because of the talent shortage, insurers and other financial services providers have to change mindsets and actively addressing these demands despite the regulatory challenges of data management. An important step is to approach recruiting from a different perspective.

The goal should be to actively engage the right candidates and proposing long-term perspective in a career. Although these young talent will have to be trained, this could be balanced with a quicker onboarding and generally higher level of productivity through mobile devices and applications.

What they lack in expertise they might be able to compensate with more empathy, mainly towards their peers who will also constitute the majority on the client end. Millennials, with their growing purchasing power, can be just the right target for selling financial services. And who could better convince them than someone who is exactly in their shoes? And someone who is in their shoes knows well how a mobile application can be more convincing than a face-to-face meeting.

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Mobility and sustainability are two trends that clearly support each other when the challenge is to better manage the available resources. A mobile solution in the enterprise contributes to protecting or just using these resources sparingly, in at least three ways.

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We can see these clear impacts of mobility on sustainability:

1. Reduces or replaces paper usage

Saving and recycling paper should already be in the blood of many of us by now. But when it comes to business, we become more cautious and rely on printed and filed documents as a backup.

But regardless of the industry or the current state of digital transformation at your company, you can be perfectly compliant if all the invoicing and documentation is created and stored electronically.

In other words, a paperless office can be achieved and business reasons are increasingly pushing companies in the green direction. Although a completely paper-free operation has only been achieved by 3% of the companies, 33% has made serious progress and become almost paper-free, and a further 16% is actively looking at their processes to find paper-saving alternatives.

And, if there’s a digital way, why can’t be a mobile way?

One of the “side-effects” of planning a mobile app implementation is to rethink your business processes and workflows. Do they really require people to print, copy, and distribute physical documents?

The answer is usually no: unlike bits and bytes, paper is made of scarce natural resources so the best way to save on it is to leave it out of business processes altogether. Not to mention that the storage of digital data is also cheaper and more easily searchable.

2. Better distributes resources

A mobile application not only saves on your resources, but it also helps to better distribute the amount you still need to get the work done.

One of the ways it does that is real-time data transfer: behind the fancy expression is the most up-to-date information on the whereabouts of your field work team, the status of your sales deals, or the available stocks of a certain product.

Through a mobile application, managers can schedule workforce hours according to actual demand, have the team complete tasks while on the go. A more effective distribution of resources can lead to productivity gains as much as 34%. Meanwhile, a super-responsive mobile salesforce, for example, speeds up sales cycles and leaves customers more satisfied. According to an Adobe research, 86% of US sales managers believe in the power of digital tools when it comes to improving job performance.

Helps gather better data to measure the impact of activities

To introduce new tools for a more sustainable operation, businesses need data to see what path to follow and what activities have brought actual improvements in these areas.

Mobile applications are the most useful for gathering real-time quality data: when registered on-site, it has a better chance to correctly describe the situation, reduce the chance of human errors, and create a more standardized environment for the analysis of the data.

Think about a sales situation: if the agent can present a questionnaire on a mobile device and have the client fill it, he or she can assist them with the questions and make sure the document is complete when submitted. Or, mobile apps can provide forms to update customer data, which is getting more and more important: in retail, for example, 90% of companies believe that by 2020 the majority of sales decisions will be done based on them.

Sustainability practices and principles have, therefore, several positive effects on business operations, and all of them can be enhanced by an enterprise mobile solution.

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The post 3 Ways Mobility Helps Your Business Become More Sustainable appeared first on Scolvo.

With businesses worldwide finally getting the message about an inevitable digitalization and mobilization, we surely welcome the large-scale improvements it will bring. However, there will be challenges along the way, and the more you’re prepared the more likely you are to exploit the benefits of new technologies.

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Challenge #1: Speed

Now that the early adopters’ time is up, every other business has to act quickly and commit to digitalization. In a research done by McKinsey last year, figures show some industries clearly emerging, not so much for digitalizing their assets, but for a faster adoption of digital processes and interactions and a larger amount of digital workers. Tech’s lead is no surprise, but media, finance, and professional services are also in the top league. Companies operating in these sectors have workforces that are 13 times more engaged digitally than others – thus that much more of a chance to improve productivity.

Businesses are not just going digital, but many are going mobile-first. New processes and workflows are translated to mobile procedures before anything else. This trend requires a lot more applications though (the market segment is expected to double in five years’ time), so development cycles have to be quicker. Those procedures that can’t be mobilized can still be automated with technology.

Challenge #2: Security

Wherever sensitive data is being created there will be a chance of a cyber-attack. Fortunately, not only the criminals’ tools are improving. Mobile devices with access to business-sensitive information can be protected either with an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) tool, or with mobile threat defense, or combining the two. Choose what fits your company best but don’t choose to ignore the threat – a mobile data breach can cost the enterprise as much as $26.4 million.

Challenge #3: New devices

No need to fight this: employees will continue to bring in their personal devices (mobiles, tablets, and increasingly, wearables), but this is going to be your smallest problem in the coming years. The Internet of Things (IoT) will pose a much greater challenge: with over 30 billion devices connected in a few years, you will need the proper business apps for them, just as you have them for other devices. It will require more complex platforms to have everything under control, together with a solid backend infrastructure.

Besides the technical challenges, there will also be the task of finding where to fit these new devices in the business processes. On a more positive note, if you succeed, you will be rewarded by extra productivity gains and even more cost savings.

Challenge #4: New user demands

Users have grown together with the digital age already have high expectations towards digital tools in the workplace, only to be outdone by the digital native generation. Millennials had caused quite a shock when taking over the workforce, demanding, even more, accessibility, even more functionality of the tools, and, most of all, a seamless user experience.

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The post 4 Challenges of Mobilizing Businesses in 2017 appeared first on Scolvo.

The future of the workplace will bring paradigm shifts in many ways: the traditional boundaries of work and life, the hierarchies, and job descriptions disappear. Everything becomes interconnected, transparent, and mobile. The holistic approach to organizing work prevails. Productivity is seen as a result of seamless cooperation between the people and the technology in the management of the data.

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To break it down, the workplace of tomorrow will essentially contain these five elements:

Digitalization

The digitalization potential at companies is being utilized globally, but even at the leading country, USA, it is still at only 18%. In Europe, an even lower ratio of companies are fully digitized, and Germany currently stands at 10%.

But digitalization will surely transform the workplace, from the tools we use to the jobs we have. It also creates an incredible amount of data: so it’s more and more about how we extract the essential information for the business from that data most effectively. We focus more on analyzing processes and forecasting trends to increase productivity.

Mobility

Technology changes both our private and working lives. We work increasingly mobile and use new, innovative tools to organize mobile work, especially when it comes to cooperation. These tools are heavily influenced by consumer technology, so their focus is just as much on being likable as on being functional.

It is achieved by a more human approach when software has to adapt to employee’s and not vice versa. As a result, software becomes flexible and easily adjustable.The buy-in of employees is key to the success of a mobility implementation.

Transparency

Corporations that want to be successful as the workplaces of tomorrow should be transparent at all levels, including their values and their workflow.

This transparency also has its physical representation in the exterior and interior design of the offices (see Microsoft’s new Munich offices).

The increased transparency, if used consistently, builds the credibility of the organization as a market player as well as an employer.

Value-based approach

Transparency will support the company’s efforts to live by certain values and form the company culture along these values. The underlying concept is that our work environment should be identical to what we communicate to the market.

The new generation in the workforce, the Millennials, is especially focused on what values it can share with the employer. The value-based thinking is effectively supported by mobility solutions, giving employees the autonomy, responsibility, and motivation they demand. Work-life balance is perceived as the default, holistic approach.

Changing professions

As a result of the changes that go on in companies, professions are changing, too. There is a general shift in corporate decision-making: IT is not solely in charge of deciding about technology-related purchases but have to cooperate with other departments and provide back-end support to business decisions.

The individual professions are becoming more specialized as required by specialized technology (e.g. data scientists and cloud architects). The workplaces have to support a new, hyper-connected, digital native generation, alongside the older generations and facilitate lifelong learning.

SCOLVO is committed to developing solutions that enable companies to create the workplace of tomorrow. We believe that mobility is a major driver of innovation and digital transformation and that this innovation enables corporations to work more efficiently and stay ahead of the competition.

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How would you identify a threat to your business? Many say it is the competition being increasingly digital and mobile. But it might also be that it’s you not being digital and mobile. The solution? Facing the challenge – it’s less harmful than you would think.

Adapting is a must

Being able to react faster to challenges is becoming the new norm for the energy industry – a clear sign of the finally ongoing digital transformation. And there are quite a few of the challenges you should react faster to:

• An increasing demand for energy: one study by the US Energy Administration Information projected that global energy consumption will show a 56% increase by 2040.
• The security of supply: Always high on the agenda of energy executives and country representatives, this is an issue that requires a constant lookout for new opportunities and cooperations among countries and market players.
• The responsiveness to consumer problems: according to Pike Research data, 57 million customers used social media to engage with their energy service providers in 2011, and this number is will possibly grow to 624 million by the end of 2017.

Technology-savvy companies can get ahead of the game for sure, but it is also clear that technology in itself will not steer any company in the safety zone. So the question is not whether to adopt technologies or not anymore: in what way you can do it to achieve the best possible results?

Hint: being faster essentially means being more efficient and productive, and this will mainly be due to an optimization of the processes – supported by technology, in and out of the office.

Mobilization for faster reactions

So the good news is that digitalization, and especially workflow mobilization, present new opportunities for energy companies to optimize their operations. What was once a slow and paper-intensive workflow can now be replaced with innovative technology for more efficiency.

A great example is the mobilization of field workers: mobile devices and business apps enable them to provide real-time data about meter stands and outages, or the whereabouts of the worker. The analysis of these datasets then help managers optimize workforce distribution and make decisions regarding business-critical processes.

Energy suppliers successfully manage to introduce digital tools to their maintenance workforce and consequently increase productive hours by 15-20%. Their tools typically include GPS and traffic information added to route planning and management and a diagnostic device helping them with the analysis and the solution of a problem.

Easy-to-use enterprise mobile applications allow for a dramatic increase in productivity, because, for example, the field workers don’t have to spend time with running around with papers. The more adopted a platform or a workflow is, the more visible the improvement in productivity.

To cite another example, a well-known regional energy service provider managed to re-assign 13% of the working hours of each employee to other tasks on a daily basis, resulting a significant improvement in its field operation’s productivity with better planning and management supported by enterprise mobile technology.

Electronic data exchange and instant reporting result in faster fixes, smarter distribution, and more satisfied customers. Ultimately, all these benefits clearly speaks business: an improved profitability of the company.

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