Enterprise mobility management is becoming essential in a “hybrid” in-office/remote working model. Over the past year, we have seen millions of professionals change how they work, and remote working has become standard – not the temporary trend many thought it might be. According to Deloitte, in the UK around 25% of workers will work from home full -time by 2025, up from just 5% in 2019. It’s fair to expect a similar sort of figure for the rest of the world as companies adapt to the new reality.
Large enterprises typically need to manage multivendor, multi-OS, and multipurpose fleets of mobile devices. Simultaneously, they also have to manage multiple local vendors, making it difficult to track and gauge suppliers’ performance. This creates limited visibility over mobile fleets and contracts, making it hard to optimize productivity and keep costs under control.
This complexity sits alongside the need for mobility in building an agile, productive, and motivated workforce. Mobility gives all your workers, from office personnel to frontline staff, and field agents to factory workers, an on-demand environment that helps them be more flexible and productive. But there is a complication for enterprises in that the mobile industry operates on a country-centric basis, which means terms of contracts, services, offers and billing systems differ by country. This results in multiple contracts in multiple countries from mobile service providers (MSP), mobile network operators (MNO), device providers, telecom expense management (TEM) and unified endpoint management (UEM) providers –- all of which need to synchronize with other enterprise IT tools and components.
According to Gartner, 50% of large enterprises will require an MSI approach for their vendor management by 2022, up from 10% in 2018. Gary Barton, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, comments, “The management of global mobility and IoT contracts is a clear pain point for enterprises where many are looking to simplify processes and contract structures. Orange has the global managed service credibility to offer a compelling solution.”
MSI can ease the load
If the above sounds at all familiar, you should consider MSI. If you are a multinational corporation with operations worldwide, you could likely use some help with enterprise mobility. Some of the business challenges you could face include:
1. You operate a complex supply chain worldwide, and as a global operation, you may need to manage hundreds or even thousands of local-level mobile service providers.
2. IDC has previously forecast that worldwide mobility solutions spending will reach $1.72 trillion by the end of 2021, a prediction made before the COVID-19 situation. With so much money being invested, enterprises will need assistance from centralizing or out-tasking mobile management to drive cost controls and operational efficiency.
3. Contract management can be a challenge, and you want to know what you’re spending to inform budgeting. Large enterprises often struggle for visibility of enterprise mobility landscapes, and tracking performance levels of mobile service providers is difficult.
4. The majority of enterprises simply don’t have the skills or experience to integrate and manage all those mobile providers around the world. Furthermore, according to Gartner, MSI can free up an organization’s management time by as much as 50% and drive cost savings of 13%. Enterprises are always looking at how they can make better use of workers’ time.
Working with an MSI partner can ease the burden of all these responsibilities. Your MSI partner takes over the management of all your mobile service providers and suppliers and looks after them for you. An MSI partner can take a key issue like incident and request management and make it simpler for the enterprise. For large enterprises with thousands of internal customers who need to access services from different mobile operators in various countries, the management of requests and incidents can be a significant – and costly – challenge.
Telecom expense management is another area where an MSI partner delivers value to enterprises. With so many users in so many countries using voice and data to get their jobs done, enterprise mobility costs can quickly spiral out of control. Visibility of vendor performance is another continuing enterprise mobility challenge, as you want to ensure return on investment (ROI). An MSI partner overcomes that challenge for you by centralizing all your mobile and service provider contracts to keep vendors on their toes. You also want to make sure your mobility strategy enables your employees to be more productive. MSI delivers on that through unified endpoint management, where your MSI partner helps your employees to securely access corporate data and apps from any device or OS.
Benefits of MSI to enterprise mobility
The net benefits of using MSI in enterprise mobility are clear. Overall, using third-party experts to manage the multi-local complexity of your mobile services frees you up to concentrate on your core business. It makes sense: you don’t necessarily have the skills in-house or contacts at the local level, so let someone who does have them run it for you.
MSI processes help you reduce unnecessary costs and increase value from your mobility providers and suppliers. You gain greater operational efficiency via streamlined management of mobile resources. Increased visibility and control give you greater visibility of costs and mobile traffic monitoring to understand your usage better. Centralized governance ensures all your contracts are implemented correctly and monitors service levels to ensure performance. And finally, your MSI partner gives you a single point of contact for ownership and control of all your mobile services worldwide.
Overall, MSI helps you reduce your mobility management total cost of ownership (TCO) by centrally managing all your enterprise mobile services, spending and performance. It helps you make a complicated area of your business simpler by enlisting an expert to manage it for you, letting you focus on running and growing your core business. It’s time to engage with MSI.
Discover MSI for Mobility, which lets you manage enterprise mobility centrally just like any other IT service, and Unified Endpoint Management, our solution for you managing your mobile devices.