Businesses are re-evaluating how they manage devices, applications and data across a sprawling mobile landscape, according to a new Vanson Bourne report commissioned by Tangoe – a leading technology expense and asset management company.
The study reveals a troubling challenge: Every company is reliant on mobile devices, but that dependence creates a sizable drag on already stretched IT resources. As businesses confront demands for greater security, productivity and employee satisfaction most are rethinking their approach to mobile management.
The research surveyed 300 IT decision-makers from organisations with global annual revenue from US$500 million to more than US$50 billion to explore mobile device usage trends and how companies satisfy the requirements of administration with Managed Mobility Solutions (MMS) keeping inventories, services and security under control.
“As companies of every size and across every industry become more mobile-centric, managing a vast array of assets becomes a bigger, more difficult and yet more important task,” said Chris Ortbals, Chief Product Officer, Tangoe. “The IT complexity of managing mobile assets and service providers alongside the criticality of securing them can quickly undermine innovation if companies don’t have the right support partnerships in place to help them administer and secure a sprawling landscape of devices.”
The findings show that companies are struggling with mobile device management due to recruitment and retention issues and 89% agree their mobile device helpdesk requires improvement. The top challenges include sourcing new mobile assets (73%), managing mobile inventory (70%), help desk support (61%) and reverse logistics – collecting, recycling and wiping assets (53%). IT teams also have trouble keeping track of users’ devices, but this is less of a challenge when their helpdesks are managed by an external vendor.
Mobile dependency comes with high stakes
Growing dependence on mobile devices is taking a sizeable toll on IT resources – to the tune of one-third of IT team productivity and cost. And with overall staff churn rates at 17%, managing a mobile fleet is challenging for companies of all sizes, particularly when 65% of companies are completely reliant on mobile devices and the average company has 68,000 devices in use.
Business Continuity and mobile services are tightly intertwined, meaning the fleet is a key player in avoiding revenue losses. Also, most employees are using personal devices to do their work, which means companies cannot afford not to address mobile security risks.
BYOD vs. corporate-managed devices
Companies are trying to balance the requirements of security with the freedoms of employee choice and satisfaction and most are not convinced their existing ownership approach will stick.
More than half of respondents cited security concerns (53%) and data breaches (50%) among their concerns with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approaches. With mobile experiences redefining how employees perform from the frontlines to the back office, more than 81% of companies plan to change their approach to batten the hatches and improve Return on Investment (ROI).
