Mobility As A Service May Be The Answer Enterprises Are Looking For
Mobility as a Service, or MaaS, isn’t actually a new concept. Consumers are quite used to the premise with cellphone contracts – pay this amount for one or two years, and at the end of the term, get a new device, and repeat. You always get a relatively recent device that is warrantied and keeps you able to make calls, send messages, and so on.
But how would this work in an enterprise situation? Obviously in a BYOD mobility strategy, the more modern the devices are that the users have access to, the better. (1) It may be that the future of this strategy includes more involvement from the business in the choice of the device, but that’s still some way down the road yet.
Centralized Solutions
Mobility has crept up on many businesses and almost happened as a surprise. Somebody high up heard about using their smartphone to work on the road, and so decided a company smartphone was the answer. It worked well, so they asked that several staff members also adopt this approach, and ad hoc spending on mobile devices became the norm.
Now, any time a new recruit joins the company, a device is purchased and allocated to them. This involves research, ordering, configuring, etc. which can take quite some time. Alternatively, they may bring their own device, which again requires time to get set up to work with the office equipment.
MaaS turns this into a central solution, using a single external company to organize and support all of the above. User got a problem? Pass it to the support team. Time for an upgrade? See what’s recommended.
One of the greatest conveniences of this approach is that the costing is much simpler than trying to run everything in-house. A single payment to the MaaS provider takes care of everything, and there is no patchwork plan for spending a little on a smartphone here, a little on a tablet there, and nobody really understanding how the whole system works together which gives little opportunity for support.
The Benefits Of A MaaS Plan
Flexibility within in MaaS plans allows your business to grow with ease, and there’s never anything to worry about. Security and training are taken care of, and support is given easily as everything runs through the same system and every device is known. (2)
Professional Mobility Lifecycle Management (MLM) companies provide these services simply, helping the business to run effectively and improving user satisfaction by resolving problems quickly and easily. Costs are cut by using an integrated service, rather than the piecemeal approach that can develop naturally which leads to unmonitored spending and no coherent plan for growth.
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