Something new that IT consumerization gives to business

The worldwide spread of corporate initiatives like IT Consumerization and Bring Your Own Device makes it necessary to build a return on investment (ROI) model in these promising areas. The basis for creating such a model can be found in a systematic understanding of the business benefits brought by these new paradigms in the services of IT department. Actually, this article is to determine benefits for corporate organizations from introducing these radically new approaches.

The first obvious benefit from implementing BYOD is providing new financial advantages for organizations, namely the simultaneously reduced costs and increased profits for companies. This is what any business aspires. Let us see where such opportunities come from in case of organizations having adopted the BYOD approach.

First of all, the increase of revenue is achieved due to the higher productivity of the organization’s staff. After the introduction of mobile communication technologies employees get permanent uninterrupted access to internal resources and data of the organization when and whert they find it necessary and convenient. The employees are now able to carry out business activities faster and more often. According to analysts, some organizations get a 45% increase in staff’s productivity with the introduction of mobile technologies.

As for the expenses, they can be reduced after the implementation of the BYOD project by decreasing the cost of hardware which is now paid for by employees themselves (either wholly or in agreed proportions with them), and the lower cost of rent. From the point of view of employees they are now able to work wherever it is convenient for them, therefore, they no longer require permanent workplaces in the office of the company.

In addition to the listed above there should be an additional positive effect of using BYOD noted here, too. It is associated with the improved quality of customer service and the faster business responses to the needs of the market. This in turn increases the degree of satisfaction of both employees and customers. As a result, the profitability of the business can grow, and the costs get lower. For example, sales managers need to attend less personal meetings with clients to strike deals if they are able to use mobile technologies and respond to most clients’ inquiries right at the meeting, so to speak, by connecting to the resources of the company live. Eventually, the sale costs are reduced; moreover, such changes are highly appreciated by customers themselves, thereby increasing their loyalty and possibly attracting new customers and adding more sales.

The second important advantage of the BYOD implementation is the significantly improved operating efficiency of the organization. After the introduction of the BYOD approach the personnel becomes as more available as the corporate information, consequently, the time required to make important decisions is essentially reduced. Therefore, implementing BYOD is precious to the corporate management because the speed of decision making is one of the key indicators for evaluating top management performance in any business. This may be one of the main reasons for the BYOD popularity: more than 60% of CIOs consider introducing mobile technologies for themselves and their organizations a key priority in the near future. With the staff almost always in touch the urgent tasks (e.g., recovery from faults in the manufacturing process) become easier to coordinate so that problems can be solved more effectively.

In addition, employees’ mobility and flexibility brought by the use of the latest mobile technologies such as social networking, chats, blogs, etc. has a positive effect on the employees’ attitude to remote work like at home or on the road. This way employees are less and seldom reluctant to share information with colleagues, horizontal communication within the company is improved, there is a possibility of involving employees of adjacent departments, joint projects with other units and “virtual” teams creation are simplified. That is the desire of employees to share the necessary information is increased as well as the potential number of workers capable of collaborating on projects. Surely, all this has a positive effect on the operating performance of the organization.

It should also be noted that the introduction of BYOD may be a good opportunity to simplify and decentralize information security policy and corporate security management. According to many experts, this trend in the medium term is going to replace the outdated and often ineffective traditional approaches to information security management based on the assumption of the corporate network perimeter’s immutability.

The third major advantage for an organization having implemented the BYOD concept is the increased overall professionalism of the personnel. Due to the fact that employees are free to choose the technologies they want to use their creativity increases, besides that the company is able to attract more fresh talents. Moreover, if the organization also helps to find and use the exact technologies and tools that really bring tangible benefits in the everyday performance and trains their employees to work in accordance with the best world practices, there is a positive effect on employee’s motivation eventually reducing the attrition rate.

To conclude I would like to mention another important advantage that the organization gets after the BYOD introduction. This advantage is due to the so-called data cleansing. The corporate data used by employees and executives become more consistent and less distorted – this effect after the BYOD introduction is achieved by the already mentioned increased availability of information and better quality of communication among employees. In other words, if an error has crept into the data the more people are able to find and correct it. In addition, the successful introduction of the BYOD concept is often associated with the use of cloud computing architecture which also increases the degree of control over internal corporate traffic.

The data become “cleaner” and the organization can grow more effectively on them, extract benefits, improve and be a success in business.