When it Comes to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) - Bell Says, BRING IT ON!
July 02, 2012
When it involves mobile workers and the technology they need to help their customers, Bell believes that in order to gain a competitive advantage, you must look at innovative ways to enable, manage and optimize your mobile environment. Bell recently signed up yet another client for Enterprise Mobility Services as our SME’s helped them through their struggles with Bring Your Own Device issues and opportunities. Bell helped this global enterprise discover existing data, evaluate mobile worker’s needs, examine new smartphone and tablet capabilities, and consult on integration with business initiatives and corporate security policies. At the end of the BYOD analysis, Bell said, “bring it on”.
Recently organizations have been challenged in dealing with an influx of inquiries regarding employee’s bringing their own technology which may or may not fit within current corporate standards. What are the true incremental cost increases or savings? How can we manage BYOD? Can it be secure? What are the productivity improvement implications? How about employee satisfaction? “All great questions and all complicated answers in an emerging technology that simply changes month to month”, says Scott Allen, Director of Enterprise Mobility at Bell Techlogix.
Working closely with this client, Scott and his team helped them net out the positive impact that BYOD could have for their organization. “Because the decision is so complex, there are many misconceptions regarding implementation and ongoing operations”, says Scott. “For instance, cost savings may not be the driving force that makes this work. Other areas such as productivity, employee satisfaction, speed of access to information or response to customers may balance out incremental cost increases and be the key to making BYOD the right choice,” he added.
Bell currently manages over 8,500 devices, 55% of which are smartphones, for this client. This fully managed mobility program now leverages the benefits of BYOD for Individual Liable users and delivers substantial cost savings for the Corporate Liable population. Bell delivered a customized hybrid BYOD Program tailored to the requirements of specific business units and user profiles (e.g. executives, sales, international operations, etc.). This program will remain on a controlled implementation plan and as a result has yet to be offered to all employees, but is already yielding the projected benefits.
For this company BYOD was no mistake. What was originally an industry concept has now evolved into actionable programs. This may mean that your only mistake today may be not taking a look at whether BYOD can add value to your business.