The Real Economic Keys to BYOD Today

BYOD is an abbreviation for “Bring Your Own Device” This is an unique business concept which allows employees to perform professional functions through their own devices, with the objective of reduced costs and enhanced efficiency.

The advantages of BYOD:

• One of the biggest advantages of BYOD is the huge Cost saving on IT devices, equipment and necessary accessories.
• The users are well acquainted and comfortable with working on their own devices which in turn boosts their productivity.
• The agility of BYOD i.e. no personal/professional device duplication, adds to the efficiency of the user.
• BYOD also keeps the user connected with the enterprise any day, anytime, anywhere.

Although these advantages make it an ideal concept for enterprises, but there are few challenges too. Still, if the enterprises do the proper cost analysis and follow the BYOD optimization practices, this concept will bring great success and higher ROIs too.

So the real economic keys to BYOD today are:

• Cost/benefit analysis of BYOD policy
• Optimizing the benefits of BYOD policy

Cost benefit analysis of BYOD policy

• Both costs and benefits of BYOD should be analyzed against company owned devices. Remember, more the employees, more the costs for company owned devices. In this analysis process, don't forget to consult with the accounts and the IT departments as they will provide the best inputs.
• Additional costs will be incurred too which will include installation of software and applications on all the user devices, costs related to software licenses, support, network traffic, administration etc.
• Cost of enterprise security: it is very important to take BYOD security measures like data encryption, VPN etc. so that the users can not misuse professional resources for personal purposes, which is not ethical. Nevertheless, these BYOD security solutions incur big costs.

So altogether a proper cost/benefit analysis should be done before taking ant decision.

Optimizing the benefits of BYOD policy

Generally, the factors which come in the way of a successful BYOD policy are OS support issues, complicated security systems and overall complex usability. So, the key to optimize BYOD is SIMPLIFICATION. Although it is understood that BYOD comes with security risks, chances of resource misuse, and data loss threat. So there needs to be strong security to prevent such risks. But at the same time, it should not be too intense and time-consuming that it discourages the user and affects his efficiency. Similarly the operating system, applications and the entire framework should be simple and balanced for a smooth user experience. Instead of making it too complex to deal.