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With the explosion of new devices and mobile service types, a growing user base, and the Internet of Things (IoT), managing mobility on an enterprise scale has truly become a massive undertaking. Enterprises leverage mobility for more than communication – they want to maximize the productivity of their increasingly mobile workforce and equip them for success. This means choosing mobile devices, applications, policies and services that are aligned with their organization’s goals. However, the implications of this growing complexity are huge. In this blog post, we will explore the main challenge of managing enterprise mobility and what to look for in an enterprise mobility solution.

The Challenge of Managing Enterprise Mobility

When managing mobility across the enterprise, there is a broad range of factors to consider, such as

• How to pay the plethora of invoices that your organization receives on a monthly basis?
• How to optimize costs across the various devices with your mobile service vendors?
• What is the organization’s mobile policy and how do you maintain network security?

These are only the tip of the iceberg, and yet immediately you can see they require close coordination between different areas of the enterprise.

The main challenge with managing enterprise mobility is that management methods are often done in silos – different departments, different management tools and include multiple people that are responsible for various moving parts. For instance, IT may oversee the managing and provisioning of the devices, while finance is responsible for managing the billing at the end of the month. When Finance pays for a device, they may not have heard from IT that it’s broken, or from HR that an employee has left the company. As a result, organizations lack visibility into their mobile programs and risk overpaying for services and devices, not meeting stakeholder expectations and not having the necessary data and insight to make informed business decisions.

In order to avoid this confusion and properly manage enterprise mobility, more organizations are turning towards the concept of managing their full mobility lifecycle. Managing the full mobility lifecycle is not just about any one part of the process; it is about combining multiple management disciplines to manage every aspect of enterprise mobility. That’s why best-in-class organizations have turned to software-enabled technology and process automation. A complete enterprise mobility solution enables organizations to achieve greater efficiency, visibility and predictability while reducing unnecessary costs.

What to Look For in an Enterprise Mobility Solution

When considering or planning a full enterprise mobility solution, there are three key areas to keep in mind: expense management, procurement and service support.

1. Reduce costs and streamline operations with an integrated expense management approach. This includes automated invoice processing and optimization. With expense management, you can better manage payments, disputes and program audits, as well as the allocation of mobility expenses through chargebacks. New levels of visibility allow you to better manage usage, pinpoint accrued mobility costs, zero-use devices and target excessive spending by cost center or individual levels. You can also leverage these newly found insights to negotiate more optimal contract rates.
2. Secondly, simplify procurement and cut costs by employing a self-service portal for employees to order devices and services, or integrate directly into your existing purchasing system. Centralizing procurement can help users purchase, provision and activate devices, network services, applications and accessories. You can also better manage BYOD device registration and compliance, which improves security for individual devices as well as the whole enterprise network. This also saves time for your users, providing them with a better and more consistent experience, while also ensuring secure access and effective content management.
3. Finally, ensure your solution provides sufficient support services that curtail operational costs while improving service-level quality to better manage your mobile network service and device ecosystem. With a mobile help desk and support, you can stay up and running 24/7, ensuring business continuity. Through self-service, employees can report and track incidents. Make sure employees have the right devices with the right applications and secure devices when employees leave. Ensure compliance and security across the organization with security and policy management.

Choosing a Provider

Having a powerful and scalable solution is imperative to successfully managing enterprise mobility on a global scale. By using a vendor with a single software platform such as Calero, you can manage both mobility and expenses in one easy-to-use application. Using a single solution to manage both enables a holistic view into your full mobility lifecycle and empowers your organization with greater visibility and control.

To learn more about maximizing your mobility investment, download the Calero whitepaper, “Optimizing the Mobile Workforce: Maximizing the Value of Your Investment in Mobility.”