Is BYOD right for your business?
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is popular among businesses that need their workers to have constant access to data, but don’t want the hassle of both an office and a personal smartphone. BYOD can help your business attract new employees, who will see your company as forward thinking. It can also save your company money, as you don’t have to pay for expensive phone contracts, and it can make your workers more efficient as they have total access to office apps and data. However, how can you be sure that BYOD is the best option for your business?
You can judge if BYOD will be of value for your company by calculating the cost over the savings. Costs may include developing a dedicated company app, data security costs, subscriptions to cloud services, or downtime through lost devices. Savings will include the cost of the phones, contracts, insurances and accessories.
Once you can set up a business case for BYOD, then you will need to create guidelines and policies to make sure that workers secure their data and business apps, if a phone is lost or stolen; this will include simple things like ensuring phones are locked and pass code protected. When the BYOD scheme is up and running, you will also need to take measurements to make sure that the savings, efficiencies or other goals you intend to reach are being met.
An end-to-end IT policy will help manage BYOD schemes. Issues such as what happens when a worker leaves the company need to be ready in advance. While that may take time, implementing a BYOD scheme will save your IT team or staff from having to check if workers are making inappropriate use of your systems.
With most cloud services making data accessible across PCs, mobiles and tablets, starting a BYOD scheme has never been easier. That means your workers will have the data they need to hand, where ever they are. Improved mobile apps also mean they can work with data, be it documents, spreadsheets, designs or databases, not just refer to them.
With BYOD never more attractive for businesses big and small, see how we can help your company set up a scheme.
