Five step plan for implementing managed mobility services

One of the biggest challenges for large organisations during any IT transformation is minimising disruption to their business operations. Improving how your mobile device fleet is managed should free up time, improve process, and deliver positive cash flow and other benefits. These five steps will help you deliver on those benefits while also keeping any disruption to an absolute minimum during the change.

Unmanaged mobility environments cost enterprises 20% more than managed ones according to a recent study^*. The study also estimates that managed mobility solutions offer a three-year return on investment of 184%. That means there are major financial incentives for multinational enterprises to adopt this type of service.

Yet successfully implementing managed mobility – as with any initiative that reaches so deeply into every part of an organisation – is no trivial matter. The following five steps will help you prepare for as smooth a transition as possible.

1. Define the terms of reference

The first step is getting your executive team to reach agreement on the overall objectives. Everyone should clearly understand all the potential benefits of the proposed solution, and reach consensus on exactly what managed mobility services should mean for your organisation.

For example, is the main goal to reduce your IT team’s costs, or perhaps unleash their time and talents for more strategic tasks? Maybe it’s all about providing a better user experience for your existing mobile workforce so they can be more productive, or helping additional people work remotely. It could be focused on improving security, better device management, more effective operations, and actually a whole host of other aspirations. It’s crucial that these aims are written down and clearly understood from the start.

2. Business case part 1 – strategy

These objectives will inform your initial stages of business planning. Everyone from across the business – from HR to procurement, legal to operations, finance to line of business – should provide additional input over what the ideal solution should look like.

In turn this will feed into a business case that formalises those goals and describes how success will be measured. And that should be signed-off by all the departmental heads, providing a clear mandate for implementation.

3. Business case part 2 – solution

The next step is to identify the technical solution or service that best fits the business case, and carefully consider whether it meets all your objectives. That might involve cost comparisons, security assessments, investigating new opportunities, and anything that will help you finalise your business case and be clear on what you’re doing.

Of course, it’s possible that no solution will meet every need, so your business case may need revision and a further round of sign-offs. Conversely, there may be more choices available than you had previously considered – for example, have you considered how the most advanced device lifecycle management providers can now bundle handsets as part of their service?

4. Transform

Every person in your organisation with a mobile device will be part of the IT journey and so part of the new solution’s success. Working together with your vendor, you should therefore prepare your employees for the new way of working, and – crucially – for the process of change.

Develop and distribute information about what the new solution will mean for both users and IT. Document the planned transformation process. Provide online training resources and other educational materials in plenty of time, so that anyone interested can find out for themselves what they need to know.

5. Track progress

Relentlessly monitor the success of the new solution or service. Is it delivering against the objectives set out in your business case? Does any further work need to be done to achieve those goals? Are your users happier? Are there any further opportunities for your business created by the new solution? And here’s where your choice of vendor will become really important. The right partner should be able to plan and advise on strategy that includes business functions across the organisation to help deliver the benefits promised, maximise operational savings, and help you transition to the new managed mobility service as smoothly as possible.

^{* “The Cost of Not Acting for Managed Mobility Services”, Blue Hill Research, 2017 (http://bluehillresearch.com/the-cost-of-not-acting-for-managed-mobility-services). ↩}

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