As more organizations embrace remote working, understanding enterprise mobility management and the enterprise mobility lifecycle is vital.
Companies want their employees to have access to the latest, cutting-edge mobile technology to empower them to perform at their best whether in the office or on the go. Working with an expert managed mobility services (MMS) provider means you can optimize the mobility lifecycle to get the most out of your hardware.
What is the Mobility Lifecycle?
The enterprise mobility lifecycle looks at the way organizations source and procure the latest technology for their end-users. It looks at how they deploy and maintain it before eventually recycling it and moving onto a newer device that better suits their individual needs. The enterprise mobility lifecycle presents a number of challenges for organizations, from cost control to security. Working with an experienced MMS provider can help to mitigate them.
The digital transformation initiative is seeing more enterprises move their processes online than ever before. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic forcing people to adopt a work-from-home environment, mobile devices have entered the workplace in considerable numbers. This is part of a general trend towards digitization and giving employees as many options as possible.
Sourcing, acquiring, and deploying potentially thousands of expensive mobile devices is no easy task, however. Many businesses are increasingly seeing the value in outsourcing their enterprise mobility management to expert providers who can assist them with every stage of the mobility lifecycle and unified endpoint management (UEM).
The Mobility Lifecycle Stages
To correctly manage your mobile environment, it is key to understand the various steps involved in the enterprise mobility lifecycle. By doing so, it is possible to implement an end-to-end strategy that streamlines processes, optimizes your costs, and empowers your employees to be their most productive selves. This is vital as enterprise mobility lifecycle management is becoming more complex for global enterprises.
Expert MMS providers work as an extension of your team to remove the burden of an end-to-end mobility strategy and take control of your mobility lifecycle. They unify processes and streamline the lifecycle, from beginning to end.
Sourcing and negotiating
Before you even get your hands on any devices, make sure you understand the needs of your end-users. Your employees need the right tools to do their work, and they need that reliability when they are working remotely. Enterprises that cannot provide the correct devices risk suffering productivity losses across their workforce.
However, negotiating with a vendor can be tricky. An MMS provider removes that hassle by negotiating on your behalf for a contract that best suits the needs of your employees. They also work to find a cost-effective solution for your business. Many vendors make deals with corporations that appear to be competitive, but ultimately fail to deliver on their promises in the end – an MMS provider can prevent that.
Configuring, auditing, securing
Effective device management plays a large role in the mobility lifecycle and optimizing your hardware to get the most from it. Many corporations that employ mobile devices among their remote working staff implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scheme that allows workers to use their personal devices to access corporate data. The benefits of this are clear – it gives the employee the freedom to choose how they want to work on the device of their choosing, but it needs to be secured.
For employees using their own devices, unified endpoint management (UEM) helps to secure their devices when accessing sensitive data. UEM improves the end-user experience and helps automate part of the mobility lifecycle by self-activating devices and assigning access based on ownership. UEM separates personal and corporate information on the same device thanks to containerization technology, ensuring the security of enterprise data.
Managing your end-users and their devices means better visibility over data usage, security, and overall experience.
Deployment
Completing a large-scale, companywide mobile deployment is a big, intensive task. Once it is determined that the devices can do what the end-users require of them, you must train your users how to operate them. Hastily deploying devices without clear visibility of cost and security can cause major problems later on.
An experienced MMS provider can handle deployment of such size while maintaining compliance and fully supporting you and your end-users. By helping you complete the initial steps, an MMS provider can ensure ready-to-work device delivery by the time of deployment.
Maintenance
Sourcing and deploying mobile devices across a corporation is only part of the battle. Device maintenance and management is crucial to ensuring long-term effectiveness and enabling employees to continue working productively away from the office.
A technical issue can strike at any time, rendering a device useless, or an end-user with nothing to do. Expert, global support is available from experienced MMS providers, who can offer round the clock support team and help desk services to corporations. When working with global corporations, technical issues can be considerably more devastating than a single device – an entire network could fail, crippling operations.
Employing an experienced MMS provider as another arm of your team ensures a rapid response from an expert support team when you need it.
End-of-life Recycling
Eventually the time comes to replace your devices and leverage greater efficiencies afforded by newer technology. However, when choosing how to recycle your old devices, it is crucial you do not expose any potential holes in your security – a data breach would be extremely costly to the organization.
Devices need to be correctly secured and retired. Proper device management and accountability is necessary during end-of-life recycling, as you do not want company assets being moved around with no record – even if they are no longer part of your day-to-day operations. An expert MMS provider can ensure you recycle your old devices in a way that is secure and cost-effective.
How Device-as-a-Service Complements MMS
Understanding the enterprise mobility lifecycle gives your organization an advantage when it comes to operating a mobile workforce. However, sourcing, acquiring, and deploying the latest in cutting-edge mobile technology to a corporation with thousands of employees is an expensive endeavour. Many organizations either end up with a bad deal from a vendor or pay an extremely substantial upfront amount to acquire what they need.
Our Device-as-a-Service solution completely circumvents these issues. We understand how crucial it is to get the technology your employees need into their hands as quickly as possible, especially with remote working becoming the new normal for so many. Device-as-a-Service presents corporations with a convenient, single-step solution to connect their workforce. We reduce the impact of acquisition by helping you to own your devices, without that immediate upfront cost.
As the only provider to own a bank, Cass is able to offer this unique solution to a common financial hurdle for many companies. Our solution does not affect your balance sheet. Instead of paying a huge initial sum, you repay the cost through monthly payments that are automatically bundled into your service charge.
By spreading out the cost, you can minimize the huge financial impact this investment would otherwise have and start owning your devices immediately.
Related read: A Guide to Device as a Service for Managed Mobility
Work with an Expert MMS Provider
By working with an experienced MMS provider, it is possible to take control of your mobility ecosystem. At Cass, we specialize in offering a comprehensive end-to-end strategy to ensure everything is accounted for. With our unique Device-as-a-Service solution, a global, round-the-clock support team, and third-party relationships, we can unify your mobility ecosystem.
