Is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Part of Your Field Service Plan?
If you're like most people, you love your mobile devices. Whether it's a smartphone, tablet, phablet or smartwatch, we feel a connection to mobile devices unlike any other product. Part of the draw is the social interaction and fun they enable, but it's doubtful we'd be so committed to our mobile arsenal if it didn't also offer true utility like maps, restaurant reviews, movie times, fitness tracking and a thousand other genuinely helpful uses.
Our fascination with mobile devices doesn’t end at home or during off hours. We often want to use our personal devices at work – and for work – as well. For field service organizations this presents possible benefits (reduced capital expense, limited use of corporate mobile voice and data plans) and dangers (mixing of personal and corporate data) as well. Therefore it’s important for every company to understand the challenges that BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) creates and the policies and systems that should be in place before employee-owned devices are incorporated into a field service operations.
We recently developed a free white paper on this very subject and some of the challenges we uncovered were:
- Security
- Regulatory Compliance
- Device Support
- End-User Support
We provide some helpful tips like creating an "Acceptable Use" policy that can help protect employers and employees from possible issues.
Needless to say, there is a lot to consider when deciding whether to let employees use their own devices or making the investment in company-owned devices. Hopefully this white paper will help with your decision.