6 Devastating Enterprise Mobility Mistakes You Need to Avoid
Mobile devices are becoming more common in the business world every day. With the rise of the modern smartphone and the evolution of BYOD, the sheer power of mobile devices has grown exponentially. Businesses want to capitalize on that power by introducing enterprise mobility solutions. However, there are several mistakes that you can make when integrating enterprise mobility solutions that could have devastating consequences.
Knowing and acknowledging that you’ve made a mistake in your enterprise mobility process is the first step — taking action to correct those mistakes comes next. How do you identify when these errors have been made? What can you do to stop their effect from damaging your business? Is there a way to avoid these mistakes before they happen? Below, we’ve compiled six of the most common enterprise mobility mistakes that businesses make and how you can prevent them from ruining your enterprise.
One of the ways you can stop these mistakes from happening in the first place is integrating an enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution. If you want to learn more about the benefits of EMM, you should check out our free 2019 MDM Buyer’s Guide. We profile the top vendors in the mobile device management field, their key capabilities, and our Bottom Line for each.
Underestimating mobile application development
Developing a mobile application might seem like an easy task for developers if they already have experience with creating desktop or web apps. However, mobile apps are an entirely different beast; they require their own set of skills and tools to develop. If your enterprise tasks its software development team with creating a mobile application for your business, it needs to keep this in mind. Training your developers on designing mobile apps might be warranted, and you may need to bring in mobile app developing experts to fulfill your application needs.
Not testing your mobile apps before deploying them
After developing a mobile app, the next step is testing that app. You need to test a mobile app for a number of different parameters — security, effectiveness, compatibility, etc. Your enterprise must ensure that the mobile app maintains security protocols while also successfully operating at the levels you require of it. Also, in order to prevent your app from not working alongside your other deployments, you need to test its compatibility with all operating systems and technologies in your infrastructure.
Not properly integrating mobile apps into your infrastructure
Once you have a mobile app ready to go, you can’t just deploy it without successfully integrating it into your IT infrastructure. You need to consider how your apps will communicate data to and from your enterprise’s network and how they will interact with your server architecture. If you don’t figure this out beforehand, you won’t know how to build a mobile app that your infrastructure can support.
Implementing BYOD without first designing a strategy
With the right strategy in place, a BYOD policy can increase the productivity and satisfaction of your workforce. However, you can’t just say “go ahead and use your phones for business work.” That mindset is not only lazy, it’s also potentially dangerous for your enterprise. Personal devices can be magnets for malware, and you don’t want security threats accessing your corporate data or invading your infrastructure. Your BYOD strategy should include details on how your enterprise will secure and manage devices. It should also outline policies on keeping devices updated and how users will maintain device security on their end, even when outside the office.
Not paying attention to user experience
A company will most likely focus heavily on answering the question of how it can make mobile devices and mobility solutions work for the business. It will also likely fail to address another question: how can it make mobile devices and mobility solutions work for users? When designing mobile apps or choosing which mobile devices to deploy for your company, you need to consider how users will interact with them. If your employees can’t successfully operate a mobile solution, they won’t be happy with them; and may reject using them for business work.
Neglecting mobile device security
On top of all of this, you need to maintain the security of your mobile devices. This isn’t just to protect your enterprise from malware that infects mobile devices; your company also needs to prevent corporate data stored on mobile devices from being accessed by threat actors. Enterprise mobility management solutions combine mobile security and management technologies to help lock your devices and data down. It also provides your enterprise with the tools necessary to administer security policies from a centralized location, ensuring that all devices are complying with security regulations.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of enterprise mobility management, you should check out our free 2019 MDM Buyer’s Guide. We profile the top vendors in the mobile device management field, their key capabilities, and our Bottom Line for each.
