best practice guide BYO-What? 6 Lessons Learnt in Making Mobility Work

Transcription

1 best practice guide BYO-What? 6 Lessons Learnt in Making Mobility Work

2 Businesses are immersed in an era of mobility. Whether it s connecting workers on the road, developing work-from-home policies, or figuring out how to link the CEO s tablet to corporate mobile and wireless are on every IT department s lips. So are these four letters: BYOD. BYOD, or bring your own device, may be welcomed or pushed away by your organisation, but employees are embracing it regardless of how management feels. It s is everywhere. We re no longer predicting whether it would be popular, we re acknowledging its inevitability and discussing what needs to be done to manage it. With that in mind, here are six lessons we ve learnt about mobility, which you may want to consider to ensure success in your organisation.

3 Lesson 1: Secure your data and set a mobile policy, even if you don t want to If recent mobility horror stories have taught us anything, it s that you must have a formal, company-wide policy which regulates the use of mobile devices. Here are some suggestions on what to include: The employer s rights and employees responsibilities to secure enterprise data. This may include the organisation s right to lock or wipe lost devices, and employees rights to privacy on a shared work or home device. Device expenses. Define exactly what employees can claim for and whether there are any exceptions. What is an allowable work-from-home expense? Does optional out-of-office time, such as attending a recital, count? There s no standard answer but it s important that you, your management and your HR department agree on an answer that s right for your organisation. Device usage. Employees using too much data or not using it wisely can cause major budgetary headaches. If your organisation is paying the entire mobility bill, set limits on data use, roaming, travel and so forth. Make sure each employee knows what the limits are state the limits in a contract that employees have to sign. It bears repeating that the policy should be formal and in writing. This protects both employers and employees. Lesson 2: Monitor costs Review mobility bills monthly to keep tabs on how much data employees are consuming, and the number of calls and texts sent from mobile phones compared with the rest of the company. There are three major benefits to reviewing bills: 1. You ll recognise patterns and can ensure employees are on the correct plan. Do they consume too little? Are they consuming too much? Recognition of these patterns and resulting plan adjustments can save money and prevent unnecessary charges. 2. You ll identify any abuse, such as an employee watching movies on 4G every day. 3. You ll identify false or illegal charges, such as cramming, before it s too late. Even if employees are getting the bills, employers should offer to assist with selecting the correct plan. Lesson 3: Use Wi-Fi. Use Wi-Fi. Use Wi-Fi. Strong Wi-Fi signals throughout the office are important. Many organisations that have instituted BYOD can t understand why so much data is being consumed by employees who were in the office all week. The lesson is that Wi-Fi needs to be everywhere, even in offices where there are strong broadband connections. Common areas, bathrooms, elevators everywhere an employee can take a device and work needs to be Wi-Fi enabled. The point of mobility is doing things such as responding to from a conference room or common area. We expect this to expand beyond the workplace. We ve heard of companies offering sessions on setting up Wi-Fi at employees homes. Some have even sent IT staff to help employees do this. There s no reason to use up data minutes when Wi-Fi will eliminate that possibility even at an employee s home. Review mobility bills monthly to keep tabs on how much data employees are consuming, and the number of calls and texts sent from mobile phones compared with the rest of the company.

4 Lesson 4: BYOD may actually increase costs The two prevailing BYOD options are true and corporate-liable BYOD. In the corporate-liable model the employer purchases the devices, plans and software for employees. Typically, this model provides the lowest total cost of ownership and highest level of support. The other end of the spectrum in terms of both cost and support is true BYOD, where employees purchase a device of their choice and then connect to enterprise resources. They then receive either a monthly stipend or the business reimburses them for all or a portion of their mobile expenses. Dimension Data Xigo conducted a survey on BYOD and found that 67% of respondents using BYOD said their expenditures haven t changed, while 24% actually saw an increase in costs after implementing BYOD. Security, end-user support, privacy and total cost of ownership were the most cited reasons for BYOD not saving money for the organisation. Lesson 5: A mobile workforce helps the company A recent trend in mobile workforce behaviour has changed how employers view mobile workers: employees are working some 30 extra hours a month from home on mobile devices. That s the equivalent of four extra work days a month per employee. Employees send more s, read more documents, and quickly respond to clients and co-workers at all times of the day because they can. Here are some observations from an article in CIO: of every 100 employees in a company, about 80 are essential. If those 80 each spend an extra 30 hours a month working, that s 360 extra hours each a year. That s an astonishing 28,800 hours worked because of mobile devices. Success is based on enabling this workforce not hindering it. To do so, you have to be flexible as an organisation. Any attempt to prevent, for example, the use of tablets in the organisation is extremely short-sighted. If employees are willing to work additional hours, at off-hour times, then you need to enable them to do so. Accept that each employee will use two, three or even four or more devices to do their job. BYOD may not remain in its current form, but it has changed how people work forever. Understand that, and set your plans in line with that understanding, and you ll be a step ahead of the game. Lesson 6: BYOD is evolving and evolution is good We predict that choose your own device (CYOD), bring the right device (BTRD) or corporate owned, personally enabled (COPE) a model that s already gaining approval will soon overtake BYOD. Most technology goes through an evolution before it reaches its final, accepted form. COPE will take the positives from BYOD and progress from there. These variations, in which employers retain control over devices and security but empower employees to use them as they see fit, overcome the support, security and liability concerns of BYOD. Employers can optimise expenses, and review and approve devices, operating systems and applications, while employees have the choice to have spreadsheets and Angry Birds on the same device. Organisations need to frequently update their portfolio of supported devices, software and applications. History has shown that if IT doesn t keep up with the latest and greatest, employees will. That s how we arrived at BYOD in the first place. To sum it up Regardless of your method or policy, the message should be clear: employees want to use a single wireless device to work and play and organisations must enable it for them. If not, they ll miss out on both the extra hours of remote work that would be done, and the chance to control how the organisation s information is accessed. BYOD may not remain in its current form, but it has changed how people work forever. Understand that, and set your plans in line with that understanding, and you ll be a step ahead of the game. CS / DDMS-1324 / 04/13 Copyright Dimension Data 2013

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