Company changing to BYOD... What's the point? (credit card, fund, work)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There's also the factor of paying for phone lines that aren't used anymore. If you're at a small company it's not an issue. But if you work at a large corporation with thousands of employees, sometimes they won't cancel their line when they leave the company. Or if they change jobs to another department, they might get a new phone with their new department and never cancel their old line, even though it's unused.
In my prior job I went through our invoices and checked the activity logs to see which lines didn't have any data or minutes over the last few months. It turned out they were all lines that should have been cancelled, but weren't, and they totaled over $5K/month. Once I cancelled all of the lines, the expense went away.
If they simply reimburse you for your own line, then they won't pay a dime once you leave the company, and there's no risk in pay for an inactive line.
As an IT security consultant I agree with this assessment. BYOD is trendy and win-win at 1st. Eventually IT will wish they never offered it.
I was called in by a company to analyst their security policies and I found multiple violations on end user devices.
The firm was struggling to cope with having to lease new equipment when users that did not meet device compliance or compatibility issues have to find a way to work. So firms just pony up for devices and suddenly you have to spend more money to provide and support devices again.
A Mobile Support guy told us that she has people coming in with 3-4 yr old devices running really old Android and Apple iOS that refuse to upgrade but their bosses order IT to get them working. So they have to purchase new devices for them.
IT end up ordering more and more devices that their end user owns at home that they have to provide help desk to use to walk users through with setting up VPN or Email in order to work. They have to order the latest Surface, iPads, Macbooks, and smartphones just to keep up with consumer choices.
As for PC/Macs, nothing but headaches trying to get users to install tools in order to connect to VPN and I spent 2 months working with network team on VPN clients and found atleast 20% of Mac users are still using OSX 10.6 or older that does not support newer encryption.
We had to create new Virtual machines to host users that were running Windows 98 at home and couldn't VPN in because of security and encryption issues.
BYOD only works for small shops that hires millennials.
I'm on a small IT team and do most of the mobile support. An executive stopped by this morning saying emails were stuck in the outbox on her Android but not on her Outlook's desktop. It ended up being an outgoing message having too large of an attachment, but it could have been any number of things. If I can't solve whatever problem they're having on whatever random device under the sun, then someone complains to my management, which reflects poorly back on IT.
I know we have users with various Samsungs, LGs, Motorolas, HTCs, probably other models too, with variations of Android from 4.x to 6.0, and at least HTC and Samsung overlay their own UI over top of base Android, so various menus and prompts are sometimes wildly different between manufacturers, and even on different phone models from the same manufacturer. We probably have at least twenty combinations of Android OS and vendors, not even considering variability from model to model.
I can't even develop standardized documentation for Android for users, the best I've gotten is "you may have an appearance similar to this..." in a PDF. I spent probably two hours this week supporting an end user with an Android who was really struggling with the mobile email setup. If we had a standard config, we could have set it up in short order here and he'd have it working out of the box.
There's also the factor of paying for phone lines that aren't used anymore. If you're at a small company it's not an issue. But if you work at a large corporation with thousands of employees, sometimes they won't cancel their line when they leave the company. Or if they change jobs to another department, they might get a new phone with their new department and never cancel their old line, even though it's unused.
In my prior job I went through our invoices and checked the activity logs to see which lines didn't have any data or minutes over the last few months. It turned out they were all lines that should have been cancelled, but weren't, and they totaled over $5K/month. Once I cancelled all of the lines, the expense went away.
If they simply reimburse you for your own line, then they won't pay a dime once you leave the company, and there's no risk in pay for an inactive line.
I've worked at several F500s and this was never an issue with company-owned devices. Whenever an employee terminates, an IT asset management team was responsible for canceling phone service, and the immediate manager/facilities staff responsible for the return of the physical device. If they can't manage to turn off inactive lines, that's an internal organizational issue.
You're doing it wrong. BYOD is not for firms that wish to enforce strict IT policies and provide support. If that's what you want, provide the phones. There will be no mandated security policies, monitoring, location tracking, or ability to wipe on my personal phone.
That's my opinion, but companies and end users seem to increasingly want BYOD.
To all of you IT folks that are struggling with this, look into Cisco Meraki MDM. It's free and it lets you push profiles out to users' devices that have your email and Citrix/RDP apps preconfigured. You can track devices, remote wipe, etc. as long as the user doesn't remove the profile (which is their right to do if they own the device, but they lose access to company data). My company supports the profile, but if the user has any problems outside of that they are on their own. Before this, we were wasting time troubleshooting home wifi connections, failed OTA updates, "how do I change my wallpaper", and all manner of other non-work related issues.
To all of you IT folks that are struggling with this, look into Cisco Meraki MDM. It's free and it lets you push profiles out to users' devices that have your email and Citrix/RDP apps preconfigured. You can track devices, remote wipe, etc. as long as the user doesn't remove the profile (which is their right to do if they own the device, but they lose access to company data). My company supports the profile, but if the user has any problems outside of that they are on their own. Before this, we were wasting time troubleshooting home wifi connections, failed OTA updates, "how do I change my wallpaper", and all manner of other non-work related issues.
That's a common sales pitch for any MDM product out there. The problem isn't MDM, the problem is devices are not created equally even for Apple devices fragmentation exist. When you implement BYOD, it has to come with policies adhered by all dept heads that if your worker doesn't follow they can't work. Then it rubs people the wrong way that you have FT workers that can't work because they don't have the latest patches or devices. You end up going back to a corporate owned model where people must get a corporate device because they can't support thousands of different devices.
Imo, BYOD is good for consultants like me. I get paid to come in and look at the mess created by a liberal policy. I already left a site last year that tried BYOD and eventually opted out when they realized all the cost that keeps adding up. Til this day they could not get out of BYOD for execs but for general users it's a "no."
When I changed jobs I requested that I keep my own because I didn't want to change numbers every time I change jobs or retire. Use my phone more personally then I ever do with business. Don't need big brother watching you anymore then they do.
This is how most companies operate. My husband has had a cellphone for decades. First one the company bought and the bills went to them....until there was a new computer system and everything got screwed up. Then the bills became the responsibility of the employee and put in their name. Then they gave up ownership of the paperweights aka cellphones. It's far easier to reimburse employees for a portion of their bill than it is to maintain a contract on each person and the phones.
As part of the package with my company, we all get a phone with the company plan. Just got a company wide email. We are moving to Bring Your Own Device. We have to now go out and get our own plan.
Here's the thing. The company will transfer ownership of the company phone and number to us and will compensate for our own plan. Just give them the bill. So, I will get to keep the iphone 6s and the number that I have been using ever since I started working here. But now I have to go find my own phone plan and give them the bill.
What's the point of the change in policy if they're just going to pay for it like before? Why bother changing at all? Do you think this is the first step toward cutting us loose when it comes to phone?
This is more of a hassle for you because you were on a company plan. However, any new hires would simply expense their current plan. You are simply one of those that is impacted the most.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation
I disagree with the majority on here.
As an IT admin who is required to support BYOD, it is a more of a hassle in a lot of ways than having one standard issue phone model.
That may be the case for YOU personally - but there may be more benefits for the company as a whole. I'm not saying BYOD is good all around. The key here is that there are a lot of benefits of BYOD. However, there are also a lot of issues. Whether or not an organization can gain the most benefit can only be determined via a good gap/requirements analysis.
Also - BYOD isn't just about phones - it potentially includes ALL mobile devices. Which can be very beneficial, or very costly, depending on how well the analysis was done.
I would say that in my experience, I've seen more pull back from it than reap the full benefits.
The problem isn't MDM, the problem is devices are not created equally even for Apple devices fragmentation exist. When you implement BYOD, it has to come with policies adhered by all dept heads that if your worker doesn't follow they can't work. Then it rubs people the wrong way that you have FT workers that can't work because they don't have the latest patches or devices. You end up going back to a corporate owned model where people must get a corporate device because they can't support thousands of different devices.
I guess our policies were better than average then. In a nutshell they said "Bring in a compatible device and we will set you up to do work remotely. Here is a list of compatible devices. If your device is found to be incompatible, or not up to date, then you will need to come in to the office to do all work. For questions about device reimbursement, see your manager."
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
