In the midst of all the buzz about companies realizing cost savings by implementing BYOD policies, it appears that the benefits are often less about saving money and more about employee productivity.
According to Ellen Messmer on CIO.com, a survey commissioned by Xigo with research performed by CCMI noted “two-thirds of respondents who allow BYOD in their organizations said that their mobile capex hasn’t changed — and nearly a quarter (24%) said mobile capex had actually increased by more than 20%.”
So why aren’t costs going down for many companies after they have implemented a BYOD policy?
Messmer reports “one reason is that mixing corporate-liable and BYOD policies could have the impact of negating carriers’ volume-pricing discounts. Plus, if companies have agreed to pick up the tab for BYOD, they may find employees use multiple mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.”
Another factor impacting the cost of a BYOD program is the cost of the company help desk. If you don’t properly plan for the operational support of multiple devices, you may actually end up spending more for support than in a non-BYOD environment, as was the case in 28% of those surveyed.
If you are still part of the 60% of the corporate population that does not yet endorse BYOD, you may still benefit from implementing a BOYD policy in your company. In order to ensure costs do not get out of hand, make sure you have an operations support plan ready to implement and make sure your BYOD policy is documented and communicated.
BYOD is inevitable, so if you don’t endorse it yet or if you don’t have a policy yet, start planning for it. Plan properly for all the areas of the end-user experience that will be affected and make sure you understand all the related cost and support components.
Image By HLundgaard (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons http://bit.ly/QGsDLh
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