Companies across the global are adopting the Bring Your Own Device to the workplace trend. In fact, the second quarter Lopez Research Benchmark figures say more than three quarters of companies have deployed or plan to deploy a BYOD strategy. While there’s no single way to support BYOD, many companies are allowing employees to expense mobile telecom bills or provide a stipend for telecom expense. In our last benchmark survey, the average stipend provided to employees for mobile expenses was $85 U.S. dollars. What’s the magic around $85? In most cases, the executives I’ve spoken with said $85 was sufficient to pay for a data plan and portion of the voice bill or to convince an employee to upgrade to an unlimited plan.
Instead of a random stipend, the answer should be based on what do people actually do with their phones? These expenses also need to be monitored routinely to understand changes in behaviors and changes related to shifts in telecom plans. Visage Mobile, a SaaS mobile management company, recently released data that highlights the differences in spend between various roles within a company. In a random sample of 180 companies, the company found that non-management employees spend on average $75 a month and use 652 Megabytes (MG) of data per month while management levels spend and use considerably more.
Telecom providers, such as Verizon and AT&T, offer entry-level data plans that provide between 300MG and 500MG of data. This means employees have to upgrade to the next level of data plans at 1G or 3 G or run the risk of costly data overages. The real rub is text messaging. Many companies buy data plans but fail to add text messaging. If the average text messaging use by any employee exceeds a 100 messages, then the company will spend an additional $20 a month on text messaging fees. Who pays for those additional charges? The company ends up paying these additional charges.
A business may believe its only paying $85 a month for mobility, but a company’s employees are finding ways to submit these overages as expenses. A BYOD strategy may only save a business the cost of the equipment. I’ve also heard of mobile phone and tablet purchases being expensed as “office supplies”. In short, a business still must retain insight into telecom expenses. Don’t think BYOD provides a cheap way to mobile-enable the company. A business should think of BYOD as a way to get more employees engaged in remote work with the tools they love. Meanwhile, IT and finance should have a way to manage, secure, and monitor spend on corporate-owned as well as BYOD devices.
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Mobile Consumption Through the Enterprise (Source: Visage Mobile)
