Understanding BYOD: What Can It Do For You?

When it comes to BYOD, we have all noticed the trend in the mobile industry and have carefully watched it grow into a phenomenon. However, it can be difficult to understand BYOD and determine how it can best serve your company’s individual needs. Simply stated, BYOD is a program that allows employees to bring their own personal device to work and activate corporate programs and information on that device.

MOBI Wireless Management, an award winning wireless mobility management provider, has launched 20 percent of its customers into BYOD programs – offering guidance with policy creation, MDM administration, approval processing, inventory management, stipend management, and end-user support. In order to alleviate the confusion associated with BYOD, I’ve gathered some advice to help enterprises understand a BYOD roll out:

Industry Perception of BYOD

Currently, most professionals are under the impression that BYOD is an easy, instant program that has major cost savings and requires little effort. After transitioning to BYOD, businesses believe they can cut users off of their corporate plan and save money without any effort on their part.

However, in reality BYOD requires more IT support than a true CL (Corporate Liable) program due to the inherent variations of devices that come along with BYOD. Opening a corporate program to any IL (Individually Liable) device offers the users choice and freedom, but requires businesses to burden the support of transitioning the program and managing the security of the corporate information on the device. It also puts device options at risk based on the end user’s financial ability to obtain and maintain their own wireless service.

In addition, stipends (reimbursement for part or the entire amount of user’s mobile services), when offered to users tend to inflate over time for a number of reasons. As a result, we’ve seen companies come back from BYOD for the reasons they transitioned away from traditional CL – to save money and time.

Past and Present State of BYOD

Prior to the popularity of MDMs, BYOD was made available to a limited population of employees across a few different device types. This tech-savvy pioneer population was able to stray from traditional smartphone platforms (RIM and Windows Mobile) into newer options. The growing popularity of iOS and Android devices in the consumer market drove device envy to new heights. This increased pressure on corporations to allow these newer, more feature rich devices. The price tag on these devices drove equipment cost up dramatically. Coupled with a shorter average lifespan (than that of legacy smartphones), corporations found themselves with a bigger cost problem to solve. However, this ultimately resulted in major concerns with the security of sharing corporate information.

In order to address this security issue, corporations are testing and implementing mobile device management (MDM) solutions. While MDMs can provide increased security and limited inventory management, there is still an increase in the burden of support. As a result, IT departments are realizing greater demand for security from key stakeholders and for end user device support on a growing variety of device platforms and models. Companies have increased BYOD offerings in response to end user demand and cost reduction efforts, but are now faced with increased security concerns and limited inventory management capabilities. End user credit-worthiness and financial means now have an impact on the device used for corporate use, which can impact customer perspective (if a sales person has an outdated device) and productivity.

Today, we see more strategic planning than in the past. Over time, businesses have grown to realize support is not going away and plan to invest in support infrastructures, whether it’s internal resources or outsourced wireless mobility management services. They are more deliberate with policies tailored to their specific environment and user community and have started to utilize MDMs to increase security.

Two Options Similar to BYOD

COPE – Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled

This program permits businesses to control expenses while allowing the employee to use the phone for personal use. Typically, COPE devices require the end user to subsidize a portion of the monthly service cost through payroll deduction. This ultimately gives users what they want: one phone for business and personal use. In addition, COPE maintains security, aids businesses in enforcing their mobile policies, and helps businesses reduce support burdens by streamlining device options.

True Corporate Liable (CL)

This program can offer users flexibility to choose premium devices in conjunction with business policy. With proper planning and execution, business rules can be tailored to position, function, cost center, or other subset of users. Ultimately, the business owns the device, data, and number, while also taking responsibility for all fees and charges incurred with the device and plan. With sound expense management and procurement controls, businesses can realize significant savings with traditional CL programs in both hard and soft costs.

How Should a Business Choose?

After this discussion, it is important to remember that no single program is right for all companies. CL, COPE, and BYOD each have benefits for specific user communities. When evaluating mobile strategies for your business, it is imperative to choose based on your strategies, goals and functions. Many companies have approached their mobile environment with multiple options, similar to the lanes on a highway. As employee roles change and develop, a user can move from one program to another in order to maximize productivity. Consider consulting a partner who has been through these challenges and successfully implemented programs to meet the changing demands of the business environment. Most of all, remember that BYOD is not a one-size-fits-all program.

About Nanci Churchill

I take pride in being a part of the MOBI team! As the vice president of operations, I am empowered to ensure each of MOBI’s customers experience our world class service. From the Support Center to the Implementation Team, to Logistics and Expense Management, my team is tasked with day-to-day and strategic support of some of the country’s most innovative companies. MOBI’s unique culture of ownership allows us to resolve issues and implement creative solutions, as a team, to solve complex wireless program concerns. At MOBI, we consider our people to be our greatest asset. Their commitment to customer advocacy and cohesion with sales, marketing and development result in phenomenal customer support that is second to none.

My MOBI experience began in 2006 with our sister company, Bluefish Wireless. During the last seven years, I have taken on varying responsibilities across the Operations team. I had the opportunity to support customers in the Public Sector, as well as Fortune 100 companies. I moved to MOBI in 2010 as our customer base expanded. I am excited to be part of such a dynamic and passionate organization!