CASE STUDY: BYOD: Business Opportunity or Big Headache?

Questions and Answers:

5-14. What are the advantages and disadvantages of allowing employees to use their personal
smartphones for work?

Advantages:

 Reduce a large investment expense in devices and mobile services.

 Effectiveness and efficiency could be improved if employees are allowed to used personal
smartphones, which are familiar to them.
 Employees’s job satisfaction can be improved.
 If business smartphones used are limited, it easier to keep track of each mobile device and to
roll out software upgrades or fixes.
Disadvantages:

 The cost of managing mobile devices can be increase.

 Protecting corporate data and networks becomes more difficult.
 Significant concerns will be incurred related to securing company information accessed with
mobile devices. Mobility puts corporate assets and data at greater risk (like hacker, being
stolen) than if they were only located within company walls and on company machines.
5-15. What management, organization, and technology factors should be addressed when
deciding whether to allow employees to use their personal smartphones for work?

Factors should be addressed when deciding whether to allow employees to use their personal
smartphones for work:

Management:

- An effective way to keep track of all the devices employees using is needed
- When employees make changes to their personal phone, companies will need to quickly and
flexibly ensure that their employees are still able to remain productive
- A system that keeps track of which devices employees using, where the devices located,
whether it being used and what software is equipped with is necessary
- Companies should ensure that employees agree to protect the company’s sensitive or
confidential information.
- Companies use technologies that allow them to wipe data from devices remotely or encrypt
data so that if the device is stolen, it cannot be used.
Organization:

- The cost of managing mobile devices can increase.

- Protecting corporate data and networks become more difficult.
- Information department is needed when employees are not able to access critical data or
encounter other problems.

Technology:

- Corporate IT resources dedicated to managing and maintaining a large number of devices

within the organization are required.
- A company software development team have the advantage of having an expert focusing on
making sure that new application will be easily accessible and useful on smartphones.
- With a variety of phones and operating system, it can be difficult to provide adequate
technical support to each employee.

5-16. Compare the BYOD experiences of Michelin North America and Rosendin Electric. Why
did BYOD at Michelin work so well?

The Michelin North America’s BYOD experience was different from Rosendin Electric’s.

BYOD experiences of Michelin North America BYOD experiences of Rosendin Electric

Management at Michelin North America Management at Rosendin Electric, a Silicon
believes BYOD will make the business more Valley electrical contractor, worried that
flexible and productive. BYOD would become a big headache.

Michelin opted for a managed service from CIO Sam Lamonica does not believe BYOD
Cass Information Systems that enables the would work for this company. He worries
company to make payments directly to employees would be too careless using apps,
wireless carriers. Michelin made direct cloud, and technology devices. Lamonica feels
payments to the phone carriers which will be more confident about equipping employees
applied as a partial credit for the employees’s with company-owned devices because they
phone bill. can be more easily managed and secured.

A single employee portal handles enrollment Rosendin uses Mobileiron mobile device
of corporate and BYOD devices and provides management (MDM) software, which allows
tracking and reporting of all ongoing mobile Rosendin to separate and isolate business apps
and related inventory and expenses. and data from personal apps and data, the
company allows employees to use certain
 consumer apps and store personal photos on
The portal can automatically register companyowned tablets.
employees, verify user eligibility, ensure
policy acknowledgment, and distribute
credits directly to employees' wireless
accounts for the amount of service they used
for their jobs.

Since implementing its version of BYOD,

Michelin North America increased the
number of mobile-enabled employees to
7,000.

Employee, efficiency, productivity, and

satisfaction have improved from updating the
mobile technology and functionality
available to employees and giving them
choices in mobile devices and wireless
carrier plans, the program is cost-neutral.

Michelin has obtained new vendor discounts

across all wireless vendors in the United
States and Canada and has reduced the cost
of deploying each mobile device by more
than 30 percent.

BYOD at Michelin worked so well because they were able to implement BYOD with their
own version, which helped them increase the number of mobile-enabled employees to 7000. In
addition, they opted for a managed service from Cass Information Systems that enables the company
to make payments directly to wireless carriers. The portal can automatically register employees,
verify user eligibility, ensure policy acknowledgement, and distribute credits directly to employees’s
wireless accounts for the service they used for their jobs. Thanks to BYOD, employee’s productivity
and satisfaction have also been greatly increased. The program is cost-neutral. Moreover, the
company also receives incentives from wireless carriers in the US and Canada.
5-17. Allowing employees to use their own smartphones for work will save the company money.
Do you agree? Why or why not?

We agree with the statement, allowing employees to use their own smartphone for work will
save the company money. All the reasons have been listed in the article and we will sum them up in
the below part:
1. Eliminate device purchase and upgrade costs:

The author has written in the beginning of the article that “Employees using their own
smartphones would allow companies to enjoy all the same benefits of a mobile workforce without
spending their own money to purchase these devices.” This is absolutely correct. Although managers
have to pay the additional costs incurred while their employees use personal devices for company
business, but it is still less expensive than providing employees with company devices. When the cost
of purchasing phones, tablets, laptops or PCs can be shifted to employees, companies can have the
annual cost savings from BYOD up to hundreds of dollars per employee.
2. Eliminate monthly plan costs:

Take an example in the article about how management at Michelin North America believes
BYOD will make the business more flexible and productive. All 4,000 company-owned mobile
devices used were obsolete, only 90 employees were allowed access to e-mail on mobile devices, and
fewer than 400 were allowed access to calendars on these devices. The business received little value
from its mobility program due to the high cost of service. But since implementing BYOD, Michelin
has relieved anxiety about device costs and obtained new vendor discounts across all wireless
vendors in the United States and Canada from paying their employees’s compensation for the amount
of time they use their personal devices on their jobs.

However, allowing employees to use their own devices for work still has a lot of limitations
and risks, which the biggest risk is leakage of internal information to outside because of employees’s
carelessness. So even though BYOD has a lot of good points in reducing company costs, managers
still be careful when applying it.