Have you decided to handle business processes through an internal mobile app? Enterprises can procure mobile devices via three different strategies: Bring your own device (BYOD), Choose your own device (CYOD), or Company-owned personally enabled (COPE). All three approaches have significant benefits for enterprise mobility, which we would like to evaluate together with you in the following article. Find the right solution for your business now to gain maximum value and efficiency.
BYOD – decrease costs at the highest flexibility
“Bring your own device” provides companies with one obvious advantage: the low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) due to the elimination of costs required for the procurement, maintenance, and replacement of company-owned devices. The only expenses incurred here are employee compensation, such as bonuses as part of a mobility program or covering expenditures for mobile data usage.
The TCO is furthermore reduced by simplified device management. Companies do not need to worry about the maintenance, storage, and disposal of company-owned devices, avoiding high workload and costs for storage of the devices and accessories.
While cutting down operational costs drastically, a BYOD strategy increases the flexibility of your business processes significantly. Onboarding new employees to the company-specific hardware is no longer necessary, as they are familiar with their personal devices already. Companies that hire seasonal employees frequently do not need to worry about procuring the correct amount of new devices in time. The workers are already equipped with the necessary material and can start working right away.
Additionally, employee satisfaction increases once companies allow them to use their personal devices. Productivity increases due to the ease of use that is guaranteed through the workers being totally familiar with their smartphones. This is confirmed by a study on the topic of “BYOD & Mobile Security” by Crowd Research. Bring your own device” increases productivity by around 55%, while employee satisfaction rises by an average of 56%.
A company-owned app can limit security concerns by requiring security features such as fingerprint and face recognition and encrypting sensitive information at rest and in transit. But a company’s level of control of personally-owned devices will always be lower than in the case of company-owned pre configured devices. Security risks are thus the highest concern regarding BYOD concepts.
CYOD – combine the benefits of BYOD and COPE
"Choose your own device" is an employee mobility approach that combines the advantages of BYOD and COPE by allowing employees to use their own smartphones for work to maintain device compatibility. Here, employees can choose from a list of pre-approved mobile devices suitable for using the company's own software. The approved devices are then available for personal and work use.
It is up to each company to decide whether the employer bears the costs for the device in full or only in part. However, studies show that using the same device for professional and private purposes positively affects employee productivity and motivation. Additionally, these supported devices offer more control in regard to company data than personal mobile devices.
Difficulties arise here, however, in the selection of supported device types and the overall enterprise mobility management. Of course, companies would like to offer the greatest possible variety, but integrating a wide variety of smartphones creates a great deal of effort on the part of the IT department. It is therefore advisable to limit oneself to a few top-rated cell phones.
Unfortunately, CYOD devices limit the enormous flexibility of BYOD, since devices must first be purchased for new employees before they can start work. This method is thus rather limited in its suitability for quick adaptation to peak times.
COPE – keep your data secure & create a unified experience for your employees
Corporate-owned personally enabled (COPE) mobile devices allow you to maintain complete control over all work related activities that are carried out on them. MDM (Mobile Device Management) software allows your IT administrators to manage all intelligent devices efficiently in order to guarantee maximum security, transparency, and control over the operations of your workforce. Additionally, the data is exclusively transferred to and processed on in-house servers and domains. The safety of sensitive information is one of the significant benefits offered by a COPE strategy.
Besides, other advantages include the unified User Interface (UI) that makes it easy for employees to switch to different devices while one is charging or broken. Any device displays the exact same functionalities. Thus employees won’t have to spend time adjusting to a different user experience. On top, replacement devices are always available, contrasting the BYOD approach dependent on the employees’ smartphones working flawlessly, as workers usually cannot replace a broken device immediately.
MDMs (Multimodal Digital Mobility Services) do not just provide benefits for security measures, but also allow IT administrators to update all mobile devices within the network at the same time, ensuring that the smartphones are always up-to-date and contain the latest feature updates and patches. That way, companies can guarantee that workflows are not interrupted by outdated functionality due to employees not updating their applications on a regular basis – all while protecting corporate and personal data.
Finally, companies do not need to take care of financial reimbursement for their employees’ usage of personal devices. Equal treatment is realized by providing the same corporate owned device to every staff member, leading to the same user experience with no employee being disadvantaged and potentially slowed down by the inferior quality of their own smartphone.
Which approach is more beneficial for my business?
There is no simple answer to this question, as countless factors need to be considered when deciding on the right enterprise mobility strategy. Companies handling highly sensitive corporate data should evaluate if, and how, they can provide bulletproof data protection on their employees’ personal smartphones. Forfeiting flexibility and a lower TCO in favor of data privacy is the safer option here.
When facing a high fluctuation regarding your workforce due to peak times that require seasonal workers, time spent on acquiring smart mobile devices and onboarding the new employees leads to an interruption of your business processes and should thus be avoided by letting staff use their own personal devices. The instant availability of work material is a big plus here, besides the obvious cost savings.
If you would like to learn more about BYOD and COPE, check out our free infographic here.
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