Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Why Visibility is Vital to Mobility Management

With the rise in cloud-based apps and remote work, enterprise mobility is rapidly expanding and, for many companies, taking on a life of its own. Getting control of the corporate mobile environment is a must for optimizing costs and securing networks and wireless data.

But you can't manage what you can't see. Visibility is vital to mobility management. In fact, you need two types of visibility – for end users and managers – to optimize your enterprise mobile environment.

User Visibility Makes Employees Your Partners in Mobility Management

Mobile devices empower your employees to do their work from anywhere. Giving users visibility into their mobile usage and limits also empowers employees to help manage their mobility costs. Here's how:

• Education: Most end users are unaware of the cost of their wireless device and service and the security risk their device presents.
• Policy: Users must know and follow your company's mobile device policy, including its usage expectations and security requirements.
• Usage: Once users are more aware of their usage trends and limits, they can change their mobile behavior. For example, users might not know they're exceeding the data limit set by their wireless policy. An alert or reminder that they're reaching the limit may encourage users to temper their data use.
• Cost: Once users are more aware of their mobile spending, they can change their mobile device usage. For instance, alerting mobile users when they are roaming, which is billed at a higher rate, can remind them to curb their data use to reduce costs.
• Security: Users need to know that mobile devices are a significant cybersecurity threat and how to protect the company's data when using their mobile devices.

Management Visibility Helps You Control Access, Usage and Costs

As a manager, your primary concern about your mobile environment is control of access, usage and costs. Detailed visibility and granular wireless data can provide critical insight into your enterprise mobility program, enabling you to make informed and effective management decisions. Here's how:

• Education: IT teams familiar with managing relatively unchanging on-site business phone systems might struggle to manage an ever-evolving mobile environment. Providing real-time data about user access, usage and costs can help them better handle the situation.
• Policy: Managers often set and forget mobility policies, but access to employee use data enables them to audit usage and ensure compliance on an ongoing basis.
• Usage: As managers, you should be constantly aware of usage trends and take steps to limit overages.
• Cost: Proper visibility lets you see enterprise mobility spending across geographies, carriers and device types.
• Security: Securing a mobile environment is more challenging than securing on-site data. The first hurdle is gaining full visibility into the usage and permissions on your mobile devices. From there, you can spot and address vulnerabilities.

 Visibility Tools and Strategies

Alarmingly, only one in five businesses have complete visibility into mobile device and application usage (VDC Research). So, how do you increase your enterprise mobility visibility? Here are a few tools and strategies that address one or more of the concern areas listed above:

• Software: Many visibility goals, such as giving users details about their individual spending, would be tough to achieve without software. An enterprise mobility solution like vMOX offers lets you see how your aggregated bill breaks down on an individual level.
• Alerts: Typically, your software solution will monitor usage and send alerts to your team when thresholds are triggered or a policy is not followed.
• Policy Enforcement: Policy is the cornerstone of any good mobility program, so policy development, enforcement and auditing are critical for cost optimization and security purposes. vMOX can help craft and enforce policies by building them into your mobility management process workflows. Automated processes like ordering and logistics will automatically align with your policies so you can trust that they work efficiently and as desired in the background.
• Portals: Comprehensive management portals, like vMOX's OnePortal, provide management with awareness of usage and spending throughout your entire wireless program, including a reporting tool providing in-depth analysis in real time.
• On-Device Controls: Centralized visibility is enhanced further by on-device controls to ensure your employees always comply with corporate policies and guidelines. vMOX offers an on-device monitoring app called vMOBILITY that measures and monitors device activity, putting awareness and control in the user's hands as well.
• Workflow Automation: Automating routine manual business workflows, such as onboarding and offboarding employees and their devices, saves time and money. Furthermore, automation can ensure your mobile policy is being followed by providing only policy-approved choices or next steps in a process.
• Inventory Management: Visibility gained through an inventory management strategy or solution can uncover zero-usage devices and control costs associated with device turnover and procurement. Inventory management also heightens security by putting checks and balances around device resets to protect sensitive data.
• Carrier Management: Intentional carrier management augmented by software and/or an expert partner like vMOX can provide visibility into carrier contracts and optimize the benefits and costs of each one.
• User Education: You must regularly remind users about the importance of policy and compliance, along with how to optimize the use of their devices. Users often wrongly assume that commercial airtime plans are the same as those in the consumer market when they're usually different. Be sure to educate employees about how their usage affects costs and reinforce that information with automated alerts.

Meeting Visibility Needs

Use these tools and strategies to address visibility concerns in the areas of education, policy, usage, cost and security.

Visibility is Essential to Enterprise Mobility Management
Considering the time, budget and productivity tied to using mobile devices to support your business, it makes sense to optimize your mobile environment. Remember, you can't manage what you can't see. But you can gain visibility and control by deploying a mobility management platform managed by mobility experts. 

Ready to work with an expert partner to increase visibility into your business mobile environment? Connect with a vMOX expert today.