BYOD management for Telecom Expense Management

Keeping BYOD device management out of your Telecoms Expense Management is perfectly valid

It’s a game changer for telecoms finance with the potential to save or lose a tonne of money for your company. But as Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policies become increasingly popular, more and more questions are being raised:

• How do you differentiate between professional and personal calls efficiently and effectively?
• Who buys the initial mobile device?
• How do you protect sensitive company (and employee) information?
• How do you quantify data usage?
• And what happens to unpaid bills after an employee leaves?

The good news is, you don’t have to care about any of this. BYOD may be dominating the conversation in telecoms finance at the moment, but when it comes to telecoms expense management all you need to worry about is how to track, manage and reimburse the cost.

“the golden rule when it comes to BYOD management is – don’t overthink it”

There are two ways you can do this: by setting a few ground rules, or by outsourcing.

Ground Rules

There are a lot of variables when it comes to BYOD, so the key is keeping it simple. You don’t want to be spending hours of your time combing through phone bills and cross referencing phone numbers every time a new expense is claimed.

Instead, set a company policy on BYOD expenses, and stick with it. Perhaps the employee provides the handset, and the company pays the bills, or makes a monthly contribution towards those bills (e.g. £20 per month or £50 per month). Make sure that both parties agree on how the final bill will be divvied up after the employee leaves.

Of course, the other major concern here is data protection. From a corporate perspective, it is vital to be able to protect sensitive company data which is being accessed on a third party device. However, the employee’s rights to privacy must not be breached.

Some companies get around this issue by downloading corporate applications on to the employee’s device. Ideally, these would be password-protected so that access can be shut off immediately should the device be stolen or lost, or if the employee’s contract ends suddenly.

These ground rules work best in small or medium sized companies where it is easy to keep track of an individual’s expenses if need be. But for larger or more complex corporate structures, there is really only one way to manage your BYOD policy: by outsourcing it.

Outsourcing

For most TEM departments, time is of the essence and BYOD management can be extremely time-consuming. Luckily, a raft of new Mobile Device Management (MDM) companies have sprung up in recent years, offering a range of services which dovetail perfectly with the average TEM offering.

Companies such as Mobile Iron, Excitor, Maas 360 and Good Technology are fast cornering the market in BYOD solutions, by offering a one-stop shop for busy TEM departments. Essentially, their job is to care about the nitty gritty MDM stuff that you just don’t have time to deal with. They will create bespoke systems which allow you to track and manage employee BYOD expenses on a regular and ad hoc basis, so all you have to do is pay your bill at the end of the month.

When you outsource your BYOD management plan, you are placing it in the hands of another company which knows exactly what it is doing, and what sort of issues are likely to crop up. More importantly, they can act quickly and effectively to sort out any of those little niggling problems that would otherwise be wasting your time.

As a TEM provider you shouldn’t really be spending time worrying about having control over ‘x’ number of devices and all their various apps and as a result, more and more TEM outfits are choosing to partner up with MDM companies which offer BYOD retainers as par for the course.

Conclusion

Whether you are outsourcing your BYOD policy or creating your own in-house ground rules, the golden rule when it comes to BYOD management is – don’t overthink it. BYOD has more in common with MDM than classic TEM, so it makes sense to hand the day-to-day management over to an MDM firm with a tried and tested formula. The rising popularity of the BYOD movement makes it increasingly likely that outsourcing will soon become the norm. Savvy TEM departments are already eyeing up MDM partners so that BYOD will become one less thing for you to worry about, leaving you to care about the things that really matter.

Temforce is a provider of Professional Auditing Services with a difference: When we have groomed your network and squeezed every saving possible from it, we leave you with the tool we used to achieve those savings – why? So that you don’t need to audit your network ever again.