Managing mobility on an enterprise level can be a daunting and complex task. Each major mobile carrier is continually rolling out new plans and features, discontinuing others and also maintaining their own list of “custom offerings” that many organizations are not aware exist. The vast number of plan options and combinations is staggering — over 14 million different combinations for an organization with 1,000 managed devices. As a result, many organizations are paying 20 to 40 percent more than what others are paying for the exact same service requirements.
Over the past few years, the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) approach to enterprise mobility management has dominated conversations. On the surface, BYOD sounds like a simple solution to the complicated task of managing mobility for hundreds or thousands of employees. But this seemingly simple decision comes with an array of hidden challenges. Here are three key considerations organizations should take into account before updating or implementing a new mobility program:
A Shift Away from BYOD
While having an understanding of the organization’s internal needs is important, it is also vital that business leaders carefully evaluate the ever-evolving options that exist in the mobile marketplace. In our work with clients, we are seeing the traditional BYOD framework continue to change, with many organizations delaying or moving away from the BYOD model due to one or more of the following reasons.
For starters, many organizations have lost pricing leverage when moving from corporate-managed mobility to individually-managed. Early BYOD adopters have realized that the biggest winner in a BYOD deployment is usually the carrier. Effectively, the carrier is shifting volume from a highly negotiated and managed contract to hundreds of individual contracts with no negotiation leverage. Many organizations are also facing a lack of device management options, which results in higher costs. For instance, if an employee incurs significant overage expenses, the responsibility is on the user to correct the overage going forward. The organization cannot make plan changes to an individual-liable device, further limiting the cost efficiency of most BYOD programs.
While carriers are beginning to create more simplicity in plan offerings, they are increasingly bundling more charges into base plan offerings. The risk with these bundles is the lack of transparency into true cost, and the potential to overprovision and buying more than what is needed — which is often a surreptitious objective of the carrier. At the same time, better mobility managed services are allowing organizations to capitalize on, or move away from, the BYOD model. Managed services in this area have grown in sophistication and can manage the entire mobile purchase cycle – from device ordering through to device termination.
Overall, there are a myriad of ways that an organization can roll out or roll back BYOD. The decision is unique to each organization, and must be made with consideration to culture, policies and goals. Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach, organizations must ask the right questions, take the time to gather all necessary information and carefully identify their goals before charting a course down either path. In the end, organizations will be glad they did, and so will their end users.
For more guidance on managing enterprise mobility, schedule a briefing with me at dcram@hbrconsulting.com.