Businesses of all shapes and sizes are struggling with the bring your own device (BYOD) phenomena. On one hand, BYOD is a boon. Employees get the devices they like. Often they pay for them out of their own pockets, and productivity goes up.

On the other hand, support costs can also go up, bandwidth may become saturated and, if policies aren’t crafted well, employees can end up feeling cheated by their employers. Creating a workable BYOD policy isn’t rocket science, but it is a delicate balancing act. Get it right, and you’ll boost both productivity and employee morale. Get it wrong, and you’ll need to start worrying about both security risks and increasingly disgruntled workers.

There are a few BYOD mistakes that pretty much everyone knows to avoid. You need strong security in place. You need the ability to remotely lock lost device and wipe corporate data, and you must have some sort of device management scheme in place. Google BYOD and you’ll find article after article on how to handle security and management issues.

While it’s imperative that you get mobile security and management right, other seemingly smaller mistakes can be just as damaging.

Read on to learn why:

• You should avoid having employees expense mobile charges
• You must choose certain devices or risk overwhelming your IT staff
• One practice you must avoid or you may have an employee revolt on your hands

 http://www.cioupdate.com/technology-trends/5-overlooked-byod-mistakes-to-avoid.html

I spent a lot of last summer working with a large enterprise IT department transition from company-owned Blackberries to employee-owned devices. Here’s what I took away from the experience.

This was a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) project much like many companies are now considering. Being involved in the real-life execution of the strategy is, to say the least, a learning experience. This article is titled “Lessons Learned,” but it does not include every lesson learned. That would be too much reading! Instead, I have listed some key points that are likely to apply to most enterprises considering a BYOD plan.

1. Not Everyone Wants to Bring Their Own Device
It is probably hard for some of us to imagine, but not every employee is into smart devices. A lot of employees do not want to worry about picking a device and a plan. The smartest phone they have is the one provided by the company, and they have no desire to pay out of their own pocket for anything else. As an example, while communicating the policy to groups of employees, I saw two contrasting reactions on the same day. One extreme was a couple of employees who swore that they would never turn in their Blackberry and Air Card to be part of our little BYOD shell game. The other extreme was a new employee who was already an iPhone/iPad enthusiast and was delighted that he was going to get reimbursed for using the devices he already had. Be prepared to have good options and answers for both extremes.

2. You Don’t Have to Support Every Phone
Often we hear the BYOD concept stated as “any device the employee chooses”. There are a lot of factors to consider when vetting which devices to support. If you are using a Mobile Device Management tool (MDM), the MDM provider will provide a list of devices that they support. That’s a good way to start your own shorter list.

Next you’ll want to determine the version of iOS, Windows or Android you will support. Don’t decide that you’ll support “3.x or better”; “better” is not always better. Different versions of operating systems offer varying encryption and VPN capabilities. With Android, even different devices using the same version work quite differently.

After you narrow down device models based on compatibility, you’ll want to determine what features most employees will need. If employees need tethering or wireless hotspot capabilities, make sure that the devices they can choose from will support it. Finally, it’s a good idea to weed out any flimsy phones that you would not want to recommend that anyone purchase for the workplace. Even though employees are choosing, you are still the expert on what works for your environment.

Some organizations have a very short list of devices. For example, Nike Inc. has a well-publicized BYOD strategy. They chose to begin by only supporting iPhones and iPads. This allows them to still manage expectations for compatibility, even though employees are providing the device. Nike’s plan is to add other devices as they are tested for compatibility.

One advantage to having a short list of supported devices is that self-support will be simpler. Many companies rushing to a BYOD-model plan to rely on “device champions”, i.e., device enthusiasts who help other employees with issues through support forums, wikis, etc. The fewer devices that are in use in your enterprise, the more likely that this model will lead to enough content to actually provide answers specific to the same device.

3. Enterprise Data Plans are Different from Personal Data Plans
Your employees may have a data plan that they expect to use for access to your enterprise email system. Their carrier may require them to upgrade to a business grade data plan, which usually costs more. This may lead to dissatisfaction with their reimbursement allowance unless they know this in advance. Communicate the data requirements in advance.

4. Whatever the Reimbursement Amount–People will Want More
There are employees who see the BYOD announcement, call IT and ask “Is the company going to buy me an iPhone?” People always want more. There are so many good reasons folks have for needing a larger reimbursement, even if you have established tiered reimbursement levels. The reasons range from very subjective (“I spend my whole work day on my cell phone”) to legitimate (“I travel to our Singapore office once a month”). The catch-22 is that the more detailed you try to make reimbursement factors, the more exceptions will come to light. Use very measurable factors in determining reimbursement levels.

5. Get your Tax department Involved Very Early
Just when Congress passed legislation that treats cell phones as “listed property” on employee-provided devices, many enterprises are ready to stop providing them! In the IRS Fringe Benefit Tax Guide, employee-owned devices with occasional personal use qualify for a “de minimus” exception and don’t require reporting as taxable income. In September of 2011, the IRS also issued guidelines that employee reimbursement for personal cell phone plans is not taxable if there is a valid business reason. Prior to this new guideline, most BYOD policies that included a cell phone stipend tracked it as taxable income. Since this is an evolving guideline, your tax department should be in the loop when you decide what factors qualify employees for various levels of reimbursement. They may also have an opinion about the monthly reimbursement process itself.

6. Get your Human Resources department Involved Very Early
BYOD migration creates significant human resource policy issues regarding privacy and personal liability. Issues regarding privacy that seemed settled for employee-owned devices are different for BYOD plans. The Supreme Court determined that employees have no right to privacy on a company provided device, but there has not yet been a privacy challenge on the BYOD model. Including information in your cell phone policy disclosing what your Mobile Device Management tools have access to is a good start, but even if you have a “No right to privacy” statement, that does not make personal phone privacy a settled matter. Another uncharted issue is personal media content. There are many movies, songs and photos that would be inappropriate for an employee to carry around on a company provided laptop or tablet. Will your company dictate what is inappropriate to keep on a personal device, now that it is used in the workplace every day?

If your company has a distracted driving policy, it still should apply to personal devices. Unless employers can demonstrate that they actually enforce distracted driving rules, they can be liable for mobile device related accidents, even with an employee-owned phone. What might complicate these liability rules for personal devices is when employees are using a texting service that the company would never provide, or forgoing hands-free devices that the company would mandate on a company device.

Finally, is your BYOD plan optional, or will you eventually eliminate all company-provided mobile phones? If the latter is the case, what happens if employees break or lose their phone? If they are required to have a mobile device for their job (remember–this is the justification for non-taxable reimbursement) will they face disciplinary action for not paying $300 or more to replace an off-contract device? All of these issues will impact how you execute your BYOD strategy, so get the right people involved in the planning phase of your transition.

7. Phone Number Transfer and Ownership
For years we heard about how important it was to centralize cell phone administration so that we could retain valuable phone numbers that would otherwise walk off with a sales rep along with his sales leads. With that in mind, here is what you will have to decide with a BYOD strategy:

* Can the employee transfer his company-provided number to his personal device? 
* Will the employee be allowed to keep the number that once belonged to your company if he leaves your company?
* Should the employee be allowed to use his personal number even though every customer who calls him on the company number will have to learn it?

You probably won’t answer all three questions “no”. This means that there is the potential for employees to leave with customer contacts to their phone number.

8. Family Plan Discounts
Employees may be planning on using a phone that is on their spouse’s/parents’ plan. Your company may offer a negotiated discount to employees for your preferred carrier. Employees will probably not be able to use the discount unless they are the primary account holder on their personal plan. (Interesting side note: Anyone have adult kids or relatives that are still on your family plan? With this being such a trend for companies, how about a BYOD transition away from all the “Family Liable” phones, messaging and support?).

9. Develop and Clearly Communicate Your Support Policy
Think about all the things that could prevent an employee from accessing company systems from their mobile phone: wrong data plan, no data plan, out of 3G/4G coverage area, did not pay bill, wrong password, a new unregistered device. There are plenty of others, but you will need to determine what you will be responsible for identifying, fixing, or not supporting at all. Unless they know otherwise, employees may expect you to provide support, since their personal device is now used for work.

10. Be Prepared to Support Beyond Your Policy
The support policy is great, but what are you going to do when a company executive buys the first Android phone she has ever owned in her life and does not know how to use anything on it? You are not going to turn her away, leaving her to explain to her colleagues why she had to wait until she was back in the office to reply to their email. So what about the non-executives? Are you going to leave them unable to work in the same situation just because you won’t get in as much trouble? Really?

Another, more positive scenario would be in the case of someone who your staff has tried to help, has refused to follow your suggestions and chosen instead to escalate up to an executive; then, it so happens that this executive already knows from her administrative staff how helpful you have been in getting them set up with their smart devices. See how nice that works?

11. Communicate a Lot, and In a Lot of Ways
A BYOD transition is a big deal for enterprise IT. It is also a big transition for the user community, and IT folks will be expected to provide leadership and expertise. It is evident from all of the preceding information that there is a lot to communicate to employees. They will need to understand reimbursement policies, security, privacy, where to get support…pretty much how it’s all going to work. In the project that I supported, employees were informed with email announcements, how-to videos, FAQs, live presentations and training of key department personnel. This was effective, but there were still questions.

In summary, I’d say the most important takeaway from these “lessons learned” is to understand that BYOD plans can be a complex project for a large enterprise, and to make sure that whoever delegated the project to you understands that as well.

Robert Lee Harris, Communications Advantange, Inc.

Computerworld recently published this article, Chief Mobile Officer: A job title now timely?

“…as enterprises scramble these days to establish mobile strategies, having a CMO could be a key to success, according to a new Forrester Research report.

Smartphones and tablets are “the manifestation of a much broader shift to new systems of engagement… [with] customers, partners and employees,” Forrester said in the 30-page report. “To remain vital in this business technology reformation, CIOs must step up and work with other executives to establish an office of the chief mobility officer to implement an enterprisewide mobile strategy.”

One of the report’s authors, Forrester analyst Ted Schadler, said in an interview that one of purposes of the report is to get CIOs and CEOs moving faster to provide mobile services and apps.”

Mobility has certainly become important for productivity today, and it can be an important competitive differentiator. Does it merit having a C-level executive in charge?

“The IT department would provide you ANY mobile device you want…that’s because they have embraced the Consumerization of IT.  However, as opposed to trying to find a way to secure the corporate data that will reside on the employees’ personal devices, why not instead provide the employees a means to put some personal content on their work devices?  The device (and the corporate data that resides on it) is fully managed and controlled, but also allows for employees to install the apps they like for their personal use.  We already see this in many organizations where employees are installing their favorite media players and their music or personal photos on their laptops…so why not extend that to the other mobile devices?  Aren’t they already COPE-ing with those laptops?

There are other benefits that come from the COPE model that you won’t find from BYOD.  The original premise of BYOD was (in one respect) to help reduce corporate expenses.  Made sense when you’re looking to cut costs.  However, the only way in my opinion where BYOD can truly be cost effective, is if the employee pays for their devices and the totality of their service plans. Too often I see companies fully reimburse the price of the device, or the service plans or make employees fill out a reimbursement form to get their monthly stipend.  There are zero economies of scale in these scenarios that truly provide long term cost savings to the organization.  On the flip side, through savvy Wireless Expense Management, organizations leveraging the COPE model could negotiate great contracts with the wireless carriers to get steep discounts on devices, upgrades, as well as voice, data and messaging plans.”

• Who pays for the device
• Choice of device

Who pays for the device

With the proliferation of smartphones in the general population, many employees who did not previously have a corporate paid device, and who didn’t necessarily require mobile access to do their jobs, are now asking to be able to use their own devices at work. Since these devices belong to the employees, this is truly a BYOD phenomenon.

Companies may benefit from increased productivity amongst users who are keen to check email more frequently on their shiny new toys business productivity tools. Employees may also be happier, because they get to play with their shiny new toys more.

This has led many cost-conscious companies to consider extending the BYOD concept to their corporate paid devices as well. Why not make it consistent, and everyone will be happier? Right?

For employees who already have corporate paid devices, shifting the expense onto them will certainly not make them happy. Even if they can retrieve the cost through an expense process, or even if you give them a stipend, it’s still a lot more hassle than they had to deal with before.

Will it save the company money? Probably not.

Choice of device

Regardless of who is paying for the devices, employees are definitely demanding that their employers allow wider choice. It is certainly possible to offer corporate paid iPhone and Android devices, and some companies have already been doing this for the past couple of years.

Employees like these new choices, since many have a strong preference for one type of device. Also, few people want to carry two separate devices for work and personal use.

Offering support for the newest devices helps companies to project the image that they’re progressive and that they’re aware of employees’ desires.

These questions are currently being debated in most companies, and most will settle on some kind of combination. Some equipment is better suited for certain job functions, e.g. ruggedized devices. Some employees rely heavily on mobile devices, and it will cost companies less to pay for them directly, both in hard dollars, and in maximizing employee productivity. On the other hand, the BYOD trend is exciting for employees who weren’t previously able to use a mobile device for their work.

“There’s a whole industry called telecom expense management (TEM) that exists solely because carrier bills cannot be trusted to be accurate. Despite years of claimed work by carriers on their billing systems, the bills remain untrustworthy, and (surprise!) they tend to overcharge. This is a provider you’d want to give more business and trust?”

It’s true, as a TEM company, we keep adding on more customers who recognize that they’re paying more to carriers than they need to.

“Have you ever called a carrier for support on your device? Or brought one in to a retail store? If so, you know the experience is almost always poor. Would any business seriously go in that direction?”

The customers who outsource mobile support to us do so because they don’t want their employees fussing with carrier reps, call center wait times, etc. 

A better solution is to outsource mobile management to a company dedicated to exactly that. Of course, I’m a little biased on that.

2012 is shaping up to be a challenging year for CIOs as they figure out how to safely embrace the slew of mobile devices entering their networks. Smartphones and tablets are seriously threatening the IT status quo, and CIOs who fail to adapt and get ahead of this technological upheaval risk getting pink slips and seeing themselves replaced by more agile colleagues.

Clearly, 2012 is the year that organizations of all shapes and sizes must come to terms with their mobile problem. Here are five serious mobile challenges CIOs will have to deal with in 2012… http://wireless.sys-con.com/node/2118812

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There is so much happening with mobility in the enterprise, and it’s happening so quickly. We expect to see many more companies looking for outside help in the form of managed services, as it will be very difficult to keep up with all these demands.

What is BYOD, and should this concern your company?

Ever since consumers (including employees in your company) started coveting the iPhone, there has been an increasing demand from enterprise users to be able to choose their own smartphones, and now tablets, and even desktops and laptops. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, 69% of companies currently do not allow employees to use their own devices, but that number is expected to drop to 37% within 12 to 18 months. On the other hand, a survey from October 2010 showed that “81% of employees admit to using their devices to access their employer’s network without their employer’s knowledge or permission—and 58 % do so every single day.”

Increasingly, the reality is that IT can no longer determine corporate standards for all devices and applications. This is a massive shift in the way that IT is managed; from every detail decided on and controlled by the company, to the company’s IT department being forced to adapt to whatever its users decide on.

In addition to the changes in demands from existing corporate users, there is now an entire class of users that may not have had a corporate device in the past, but now want to access company data on their own devices. Forrester Research calls these “mobile wannabes.” Additionally, Forrester classifies users who buy their own devices and choose whatever solutions to get their work done as “mobile mavericks.”

These trends raise many questions around policies and best practices. How much variety of choice should users have? How much control should IT have? How does the company ensure that security policies are being followed? How can IT best support these users? Who pays for the device, and the carrier bill?

Divide mobile users into categories

Users should be categorized according to their functions and how important mobility is to their work. Then, different policies may apply to these very different categories.

For example, field workers such as salespeople and service technicians, who absolutely require mobile devices in order to perform their work efficiently, might have the highest level of support from IT, and the devices are probably already paid for by the company. A Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, a client of Avema’s, considers their salespeople to be as important as their top executives in terms of IT support, since they drive the company’s sales. They reason that it’s well worth paying for what they call “white glove service” to ensure that salespeople can maximize their time and focus, ultimately resulting in more sales, instead of futzing around with technology, waiting on hold with carriers, and other time-draining tasks.

On the other hand, an accounting clerk who rarely leaves the office might benefit from being able to use his iPhone to access email occasionally, but it would be hard for a company to justify the cost for this relatively minor value. There is certainly a benefit to the company in terms of employee morale and engagement, and a small increase in productivity, however, it’s nowhere near as much as the value derived from enabling salespeople to spend more time on sales.

The questions around mobile policies can be better addressed once you’ve determined the categories that your users should be grouped into. 

More on BYOD:

BYOD Security Policies

Who Pays for Mobile Expenses With Your BYOD Program?