You Need Mobile Device Management. Here’s A Few Good Reasons Why

Without knowing anything about you, or what you do, we can say that you need mobile device management. No matter who you are, or where you work, your organization will benefit from better efficiency and security. Mobile device management (MDM) is important across every industry because it enables workplaces to be more secure and efficient. No matter how old, new, or diverse your company’s devices are, utilizing an MDM solution will make your job easier. 

You might find that your co-workers or employees resist the idea of being “controlled,” and thus, rankle at the thought of implementing mobile device management. This isn’t quite accurate; mobile device management is equally important for what it prevents (such as playing games or watching videos on company devices during business hours) and what it allows (including enhanced cooperation, contingency management, and a reduction in technology troubleshooting requests.)

Here, in more detail, are a few reasons why everyone, including you and your organization, needs an MDM solution. 

MDM gives your team flexibility in choosing and using devices

Committing to a particular technology can be scary. What if some issue becomes apparent only after you’ve committed, and your entire organization is saddled with suboptimal tech for years to come? No matter what you do for a living, that’s a scary scenario. 

Mobile device management software lets you keep your company connected without committing to any one technology. MDM software is compatible with a very broad range of hardware platforms (smartphones, tablets, computers, smartwatches, and more) and software (iOS, iPadOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and more). This means that you can distribute and update necessary applications to every device that needs them. Your team will function more smoothly and seem more professional because every device reliably runs the latest approved version of relevant software. 

A major choice that modern companies face is deciding whether to buy devices and distribute them to employees (company-owned devices, or COD), or permitting everyone to bring their own devices (Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD). There are good arguments for either, and with an MDM, you can support COD, BYOD, or even a combination of both. You can use containerization on BYOD devices to quarantine business data within a secure digital container, ensuring its security. If you decide to change your approach down the line, you can continue using the same MDM solution no matter what. 

If you decide to expand into new media platforms, MDMs can also be crucial to your success. Virtual reality and augmented reality technology have a huge range of industrial applications, from training to prototyping products. MDM software, like that provided by 42Gears, works with many of the most popular Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) available today, so your team can bypass difficult setup processes and quickly reap the benefits of immersive virtual worlds. 

Going forward, companies like 42Gears will continually update their products to support the latest media platforms. This means you can rely on your mobile device management solution to quickly support any new platforms and products that become essential to you and your industry. 

A Smaller Staff Can Gain an Edge with MDM

Even if you have a small team, you will need to perform as efficiently as larger teams at other organizations in order to be competitive. Having a mobile device management solution in place helps smaller teams tackle bigger goals more effectively. 

A universal issue for any organization is organizational drag– the little bureaucratic tasks and waiting periods that prevent employees from doing their work. For organizations with a small workforce, this can be especially onerous. Using an MDM solution, you can cut off many sources of organizational drag, which together add up to substantially more focused work time, and thus substantially greater potential for productivity. 

Possible time-saving measures begin the instant a new mobile device is brought to the workplace. MDM software lets you leverage the rapid-enrollment tools coded into major operating systems to get devices working as fast (and as effectively) as possible. You can also set app and operating system updates to deploy and install automatically, and if something isn’t working, you can even repair devices remotely using the Remote Control feature, eliminating transit time and letting your employees get back to work as quickly as possible.

It can be very time-consuming for small teams to manually implement or reinforce rules for when and where employees can use programs on each device. Mobile device management streamlines this substantially by letting you automatically set on-device policies based on time, location, and the network from which a device is connecting. This way, you can set policies once and then rely on the MDM to keep your fellow employees accountable. 

More broadly, the number of security incidents you and your team must address is dependent on the strength of the security tools you rely on. Mobile device management allows you to enforce policies that promote secure device usage, like only permitting logging in from secure networks. Using MDM software to automatically sync and update apps keep devices from running unsecured and outdated software; in turn, these security measures reduce the number of security incidents you will encounter. You can have a lean team working to facilitate your organization’s technology, without compromising your organization’s capabilities.

Do a better job of leveraging your pre-existing tech with MDM

You’re likely to hear the term “unified endpoint management” used interchangeably with “mobile device management.” Here’s why: historically, companies only wanted a way to manage mobile devices, but over time, they came to understand the potential of managing all their electronic devices (or “endpoints”) at the same time. The same MDM you use to manage your mobile devices can expand to manage all of your devices- including some that might surprise you.

42Gears offers the ability to bring older devices (like printers) into your network of devices through its Things Management Technology (TMT) program. This may let you extend the life cycle of your pre-existing hardware, sparing you from the need to buy new equivalents.

If you are instituting a BYOD policy, you can invite employees to bring along their Apple or Android smartwatches. Using MDM software, you can enact the same policies on smartwatches as on the phones to which they correspond. Smartwatches have real utility in the workplace, at the risk of being distracting. By cutting out the distractions, your team can enjoy the faster communication facilitated by smartwatches without the downsides. 

If your company has a retail outlet or public presence, you may balk at the price of dedicated digital signs or kiosks. Using the services provided by an MDM, such as 42Gears’ SureLock service, you can restrict tablets, phones, and other devices to display only the content that you would like them to display. This way, you can use off-the-shelf devices as signs and kiosks, representing potentially huge savings. 

Finally, the secure remote communication that 42Gears UEM facilitates allows for you to let employees access data remotely without putting that data at risk. This opens up new workflows for your team, as remote work is now feasible to a greater extent than at any point in the past.

Conclusion

Mobile device management allows you and your organization to rethink your device configurations with ease, for both pre-existing devices and new ones. When a small number of people need to handle most of a company’s tech issues, an MDM solution can be invaluable- and the same holds true for larger organizations, as well.