Despite the need for enterprise mobility constantly staring us in the face at work, companies of all sizes across vertical markets continue finding reasons to avoid moving forward with the development and implementation of a comprehensive mobile strategy. At TechOrchard, we’ll be straight with you: NOW is the time to get key stakeholders on board and get ahead of the potential for serious problems that could result from unmanaged mobile devices. A compliance violation, data breach or privacy lawsuit could derail your organization — or possibly even shut it down — if you’re not taking proper precautions.
Now, let’s assume that each department shares the blame for not making this critical change happen. We’ve heard all the excuses … so we’re giving you a rebuttal for each of them. Use this information, as well as our enterprise mobility checklist, when making the case for enterprise mobility management (EMM) in your office.
Executives/C-Level Leaders
Excuse: With so many company priorities, we can’t justify putting EMM first. It’s going to cost too much time and money, and tie up too many resources from our already limited arsenal.
Response: A comprehensive mobile strategy anchored by EMM must be a top priority, because it stands to help support every other business priority and the achievement of critical company goals. While it will require coordination of efforts from various departments, the organization will ultimately benefit from a combination of streamlined operations, increased worker engagement, heightened productivity levels, industry compliance, and protection of key company information and data from outside threats and human error alike. EMM is an investment that pays for itself time and again, and can scale as your company grows and evolves.
Management
Excuse: Our employees don’t like change, and, frankly, neither do we. It’s going to be impossible to get team members on board and keep them in compliance with what is and isn’t allowed on their devices.
Response: With the right EMM platform and well-written, clear mobile device usage policies (MDUP), much of this “problem” rights itself. There will be a process for enrolling each device, and EMM will allow employees to access the files and information they need, and the apps that help them do their job more easily without compromising your organization’s security. Ultimately, there will be less for you to administrate and fewer decisions for you to make arbitrarily about who has access to what (read: minimizing potential for you to be responsible for unknown threats popping up right under your nose!). Mobility typically increases employee (and manager) satisfaction.
IT & Operations
Excuse: We know that EMM would be a good idea for the organization, but we’re concerned about how much of our time and resources it will take to research, deploy and manage the right platform.
Response: Although parts of the process can be resource intensive, hiring and working with a mobile IT company well-versed in the nuances of EMM can minimize your resource drain and be immensely valuable in the process. TechOrchard has helped hundreds of businesses identify the best EMM solution for their needs and integrate each department within the company into the process so the entire burden doesn’t rest on IT’s shoulders. We can be available to provide Tier I support throughout the deployment process and assist in troubleshooting anything that comes up. We can also train your IT team on how to get the most from the platform with the least effort!
HR & Legal
Excuse: Getting involved in the oversight of mobile devices, particularly those owned by the employees themselves, sounds like a nightmare. The last thing we need is a privacy lawsuit.
Response: The reality is, employees are more than likely already accessing company data, files and other information on their devices if your company isn’t wholly preventing them to from doing so. All it takes is for one employee to have a device lost or stolen for critical records and details to be compromised. Rather than be reactive to a bad situation, why not be proactive and prevent this situation from occurring in the first place? Additionally, today’s EMM solutions do a fantastic job of allowing employees to keep their personal information private without your organization bearing the risk of what they may to doing on their devices professionally.
Sales & Marketing
Excuse: We’re already accessing information on our phones, so why would we hassle with enrolling our devices and giving our employer the opportunity to snoop in our personal business?
Response: When done right, implementing EMM in your organization is anything but a disruption to the way you work. Rather, it will provide you easier access to the information you want and need at your fingertips on the device(s) you use. It will also protect you from any liability should you access information without the company’s express permission and your device get lost, stolen or hacked. The last thing you want is to legal action taken against you! Finally, EMM is not a way for your employer to pry into your personal business. It will simply help you keep business and personal matters separate.
According to Gartner, by 2018, the number of organizations managing a portion of their PCs/Macs with an enterprise mobility management (EMM) system will rise from less than 1% today to 40%.1 Will yours be one of them? You should certainly hope so.
Contact us today for help introducing or furthering the case for enterprise mobility in your business.
1 Dulaney, Ken et. al. “Predicts 2016: Mobile and Wireless.” Gartner, published Oct. 13, 2015.
