As the use and adoption of corporate smartphones and 3G data modems within organisations continues to rise, so do the costs associated with these devices.
We are moving into an age where mobile devices are beginning to rule our world, with more and more data-hungry devices hitting the market, and becoming recognised as business-imperative tools to gain further productivity from employees.
Often, this adoption is not only being driven by IT strategically to bring about mobility for the organisation's employees, but more so by the demands of the various units within the organisation, and the users themselves, to achieve more with the tools they already have, creating smarter and more effective workers.
Organisations are quickly realising the productivity benefits gained by allowing their employees access to even simple applications like e-mail through their mobile phones, with over 65% reporting an increase in productivity, according to a recent IDG report.
As the mobile adoption increases exponentially in large companies, so do the complexity and management of these devices and accompanied costs. It is not unusual to find companies managing these devices and bills through simple spreadsheets. So much effort is placed into tracking employee changes, their various contract changes, and aggregating these bills, that little or no effort is placed into containing or managing unnecessary spend, or the tools and processes currently used are ineffective to do so.
An organisation's mobility strategy should not only be limited to enabling its workforce to be mobile, but should also consider the consequences and risks of not being able to effectively manage employee changes and costs associated with this mobility strategy. Being able to identify trends occurring within their mobile workforce will assist organisations in planning more effectively, and proactively contain negative trends, such as soaring roaming costs or abuse outside of business operating hours.
Organisations need to consider solution providers that are able to assist them in effectively managing their mobile environment, considering the mobile management platform they are able to offer, along with the experience they bring to the organisations' mobile reporting and management.
The mobile management solution should offer effective management of employees' profiles within the organisation so that mobile policy can be enforced and exceptions to policy managed. An end-to-end subsidy to recovery process should also be included to be able to reimburse employee-owned devices for business calls, or to recover costs associated to non-business-related calls if the device is company-owned.
The Unison Omicron mobile management solution offers management of both employee-owned and company-owned devices, all within a single platform, across multiple providers, reducing the effort in consolidating this information and attempting to manage multiple devices. The solution tracks the company's mobile spend across voice, messaging and data, and allows the organisation to proactively manage its employees' overspend, and identify mobile device abuse.
With on-device applications, the organisation is able to enforce mobile policy on these devices, as well as manage exceptions as they occur, for example, informing the employee of high data usage while roaming. These applications, combined with Unison's expertise in mobile cost and mobile behaviour management, offers unprecedented management and visibility into an organisation's mobile environment.
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Unison
Unison has been renowned for its pioneering work in the enterprise communications management industry for the past 28 years, continuously developing specialised solutions that help customers track, control and manage their communications costs. Unison's accreditation and certification with market leaders such as Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft and Siemens ensure seamless integration into both existing and new environments.
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