One of the most critical tasks you can do for your business is to implement a managed mobility strategy. If you hope to hire the best talent, control costs, increase productivity, and make more sales, you must manage your business’ acquisition, distribution, and implementation of mobile devices.
Also, as a business operating in a post-COVID-19 world, you can no longer afford to ignore mobility. In response to social distancing mandates, many businesses have gone partially or fully virtual and have asked their employees to work remotely from home. If some, or even all, of your employees work from home or in the field, you need a secure and unified solution to support your employees and ensure that they have all of the resources they need to complete their tasks.
2020 has exposed the need for a reliable and effective managed mobility strategy.
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In this post, we’ll discuss what managed mobility is and why it’s important. We’ll also explore why it’s better to work with a managed mobility service instead of trying to tackle it in-house. Let’s get started.
What is Managed Mobility?
In a nutshell, managed mobility deals with the purchase and distribution of mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. As its name suggests, managed mobility also includes overseeing the entire program, from troubleshooting to software patches to negotiating the best price with vendors.
Managed mobility is an extension of IT. However, it’s best to outsource this responsibility to a team of dedicated experts who can focus entirely on developing and managing your mobile strategy.
Why is Managed Mobility Necessary?
Developing a managed mobility strategy is a must for any business operating in the 21st century. If any or all of your workforce is mobile, you need a way to manage your employees, their connected devices, and your secured information.
It’s estimated that over 80% of employees use their own devices at work. Are they using your secured network? What are they able to access while on your network? What would you like for them to access with their devices? Do you expect your employees to use their devices to perform essential job responsibilities?
You can start developing your mobile policies by answering the above questions.
Managed mobility is not to be confused with mobile device management, which is a software application that IT administrators use to control mobile devices. Instead, managed mobility is a managed service that includes everything you need to acquire, deploy, and administer policies for your employees’ mobile devices.
[content_upgrade cu_id=”4186″]Here’s a list of questions to ask a prospective managed mobility vendor.[content_upgrade_button]Click Here[/content_upgrade_button][/content_upgrade]
Managed Mobility is a Must for the Modern Employee
A greater volume of workers need to or wish to be mobile. Gone are the days of working only at one’s desk. These days, employees expect to have multiple tools to complete their jobs, including the option to finish work over the weekend on a take-home laptop or to quickly answer emails on their phones. In fact, many employees work with multiple devices, switching from smartphones to laptops to desktops in one single workday. If you’re not enabling this flexibility, you’re stuck in the dark ages.
This is especially true if a portion of your employees travel between offices or work in the field directly with your customers. They need a reliable and hassle-free way to access company resources. Empower your workers to be able to find and use the required resources from mobile devices that they were previously only able to access from a PC.
To be competitive and retain your best employees, embrace mobility, and ensure that your policy and management meets the needs of your employees.
Employees expect the transition between devices to be smooth. This is one of the reasons why you need a solid mobility management plan. You can ensure that your employees have a seamless experience on mobile devices. Not only will this cut down on frustration and IT calls, but it will also improve workplace productivity.
Managed Mobility Helps With Device Acquisition
Managed mobility also includes acquisition. If you purchase mobile devices for your workforce, do you know how much you spend on those items? And just as important, do you know if you’re getting the best price for those items? A solid managed mobility plan will ensure that you’re not overpaying for devices that you could get cheaper.
The acquisition isn’t just about price. It’s also about choosing devices that are compatible with each other as well as your office tools and software. Thanks to android fragmentation, implementing a mobile acquisition policy is even more critical. If you’re working with different android devices, you’re likely to encounter incompatible devices, which can frustrate both your team and support staff. You’ll need to develop different protocols for each device to ensure usability.
Finally, you may wish to support either a corporate-owned or bring your own device (BYOD) policy. This also falls under acquisition.
Managed Mobility is Secured Mobility
You must ensure that both your company and customer information are safe from data breaches. This becomes even more difficult if your employees are accessing your company network and resources from different locations, such as their homes. You must control access and implement safeguards to protect your business interests.
This is a broad overview of managed mobility and why developing a policy and system is important for every business.
The Pitfalls of Managing Mobile Devices In-House
Why should you outsource managed mobility services to an outside vendor instead of assigning these responsibilities to your current IT team?
While considered a branch of IT, managed mobility really stands apart as its own department. Managed mobility is complicated and requires a full time, dedicated team.
Many businesses opt to outsource managed mobility for these reasons:
Experience
Your IT team is a wealth of knowledge, but managed mobility requires a separate skillset.
If you hire a managed mobility service, you can lean on an experienced team. Instead of designing your entire mobile infrastructure and policy from scratch, your managed mobility service can do it for you. This will include creating a policy for acquisition, usage, data encryption, security protocols, and more.
Customization
There’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” when it comes to business. Your managed mobility team will create a customized plan to meet your individual business needs. There’s no need to figure it out as you go when you can work with a team that can access your current needs and design a bespoke mobility plan.
Complete Focus
Your IT department has a nonstop list of tasks to accomplish every day. The last thing you want is to further burden your IT team with another set of essential responsibilities. Work with a team who’s complete focus will be on ensuring that your mobility needs are managed.
Cost
Did you know that working with a managed mobility service is often more cost-effective than hiring additional employees to work in-house? Outsourcing your managed mobility to a dedicated vendor will also ensure that you get a good deal from device vendors. Your managed mobility service will likely negotiate better contract terms and get the best rates possible for your needs.
End to end support
A managed mobility service provides a fully managed solution that should also include setting up devices and optimizing them for every day, secured use. A competent managed mobility service will provide ongoing support that covers everything from acquisition to deploying patches to ensuring that all employees are using the correct software. Your service will also relieve the burden from your IT team.
Final Thoughts
One of the most important things you can do for your business is to strengthen and secure your mobility infrastructure. Here’s how we can help.
[content_upgrade cu_id=”4186″]Don’t forget to download this list of questions to ask your prospective managed mobility vendor.[content_upgrade_button]Click Here[/content_upgrade_button][/content_upgrade]
