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Anytime, anywhere connectivity enables critical players in your organization to
reach out and influence customers and partners. These leaders create value and when
their time is spent on support for their mobile tools, both costs and opportunity
costs are high.
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Surveys show that IT support personnel spend over an hour per month per phone on
smartphone-related technical and security issues. Even at conservative fully loaded
costs per hour of $40 to $80 these costs add up quickly.
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Add these support costs to monthly network and amortized hardware costs, and the
total price for ownership of a smartphone falls between $2000-3000 per year. For
organizations that are making the commitment to provide customer facing applications
that are anytime/anywhere responsive, the costs can be higher.
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Support costs reported in our surveys only include the costs of the IT department.
The time and opportunity costs of the executive or road warrior are not included.
Simple logic would suggest that the critical costs are at the customer and management
touch points. Even the most conservative estimate of these savings makes device
management a clear winner.
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Proactive Smartphone Management
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Proactive management of your smartphone base, carried out with the right tools,
is the best way to lower costs and risk. For example, consider the following:
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A well designed device management solution for server software, installation and
some licences will start at a few thousand dollars. Any company with a hundred or
more devices will recover that cost in a matter of weeks, not months.
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The real cost of getting started is the time it takes an administrator to learn
and set up the system. A well designed system will be web-based with no scripting
or programming required. Set up should result in reusable packages that include
software, licenses, policies and certificates required for "hands free" installation
and secure use of each application.
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Installation and training should require one day or less, even for a new administrator.
Assuming all necessary components are in place, setting up multiple user groups
and software packages (including designated security and use policies) should only
require one or two additional days. Organizations with modestly growing smartphone
populations will recover these costs almost immediately.
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Every day changes are made in your smartphone base. New employees are brought on
board. Upgrades, new applications and security protocols are required. So at any
point in time, a significant number of smartphone users are going through changes
or installations. Offering the option to install and configure OTA (“over the air”)
is critical to any low cost strategy. If your organization is not capable of doing
this today, adding OTA installation and configuration will offer substantial savings.
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Allowing users to operate without password protection, add
applications, change settings, access the web without proxy server protection, use
unencrypted data and access corporate networks can all impact the cost of support.
When no proactive controls are provided, the need for support calls and detailed
manipulation of devices by users in the field increases substantially.
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The only way to avoid these added costs is to enable control and policy management
on each device. Many smartphone support personnel assume that password protection
and data wipe represent the state of the art because there is no way to control
individual devices and individual users. Ubi-Suite’s unique control processes significantly
lower support costs by applying automatic control on each smartphone so users are
restricted to the activities that create value for them and the company.
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Control and policy management reduces support costs because:
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- Installation and updates are applied consistently to each user
- User error is avoided in the install and update processes
- Most problems can be corrected easily by one-click reinstallation "over the air"
- Users are restricted from modifying devices and introducing problems and risks
- Security policies and associated software, encryption, proxy servers and VPN’s are
executed
- Use policies are automatically maintained on each phone without user or support
involvement
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Comprehensive smartphone management reduces monthly support costs by 50-75% resulting
in savings of $20 to $80 per month per smartphone. At a cost of $5 to $10 per month
per phone, ubi-Suite pays for itself from day one through savings in direct support
costs alone.
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