Back when dinosaurs roamed the corporate earth, employers issued hand-helds that could synchronize with in-house servers. Fairly-smart phones were also issued strictly for business use. Then arrived the Millennials who came to work pre-loaded with smart and mobile devices as outgrowths of their anatomies. They realized they could meld their work duties with their personal electronics thinking the IT department would never be the wiser. And no one lived happily ever after.
However, your organization’s story, if written well, can have a much snappier ending. By acknowledging that the new powerhouse demographic can’t seem to live without their own mobile devices, for which they have personal affinity and intimate knowledge, your enterprise can stand to benefit from the inevitable.
Millennials Have Come to Expect BYOD
If Millennials — born between 1980 and 2000 and who own smartphones, laptops and/or tablets which travel with them everywhere — can transfer a work task to their devices, they will and they do. This is so common that Millennials have come to expect Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies wherever their employers provide a productivity network accessible on mobile electronics.
Advantages of a BYOD Policy
Can your institution make good on this natural, inexorable flow of tech and social evolution? Certainly. Consider this:
- Your workforce is gladly funding your mobile hardware requirements.
- Employees can productively spend the time they would normally apply to switching devices between work and personal.
- If they can take work outside the building and perform it in more comfortable environments, you gain the serendipity that comes with greater job satisfaction. You may not be able to quantify employee dedication and loyalty, but the less you spend on employment turnover, the better your bottom line.
- With the right tools, you can free IT personnel from tracking, controlling, updating and upgrading a warehouse full of hardware.
There are Some Drawbacks
What might be considered disadvantages may better be described as mere challenges. Once hurdled, a BYOD-enabled company can reap the benefits with very little downside. If Millenials aren’t working in the IT department, they tend to give little thought to data security as convenience trumps everything else. These are the major concerns when considering a BYOD policy:
- Data security still tends to live in a pre-dawn twilight between securing only your corporate data or securing the entire device. Absent the right security features, it’s a privacy compromise. Employees own their devices, but the organization must own the contents, or at least have access to and control over it.
- Contrary to the above-sketched picture, not all Millennials have high-powered mobile toys. If your employees turn out to be tech-allergic, you may still need to buy and supply hardware.
Solutions to BYOD Security Puzzles
With mobile security the major concern, a clear, overarching policy must be developed before charging up the on-ramp to the BYOD freeway. IT should gather input from all departments and formulate a clear roadmap with the best technological assets at hand. Encryption will be key. Questions of how data is created, accessed, stored and rendered, as well as how each user account is configured and integrated into the system must be answered.
Because document management is what we do, at EDGE Business Systems, we keep our fingers on the pulse of mobile solutions. We can help your organization capture the BYOD trend and incorporate it for the benefit of all involved. Because we partner with the best in the business, we can guide you to the scalable solutions that fit your present needs while anticipating future improvements in technology.
Here’s the proof that we partner with the best; our company was recently reviewed by TrustDALEand received the highest recommendation. The stringent 7-Point Investigative Review was composed of research and a personal company interview (listen to part 1 and part 2), which examined reputation, price, quality and customer service. We attribute this honor to our 100% guarantee, our affordable and customized options as well as our commitment to providing outstanding customer service.
We’re proud of our accomplishments and want to use our knowledge and strengths to get your business to where you want it to be. Partner with EDGE Business Systems and let’s get started!
