A white paper by the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) says that implementing a comprehensive and well-designed BYOD policy, as opposed to a basic one, and encouraging the use of laptops in a BYOD initiative, can lead to annual gains of up to $1,650 per employee.
Cisco IBSG polled 2,415 mobile users across numerous industries in six countries (Brazil, China, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States) to examine the effects of allowing employees to bring their personal devices in the workplace.
According to Cisco, the U.S. BYOD market is the largest in the world, with BYOD devices numbering 71 million, a figure that is predicted to grow to 108 million in 2016. However, by 2016, China will take the lead with 166 million BYOD devices. India, on the other hand, is expected to have 76 million BYOD devices by 2016.
Worker Sentiments: Pro-BYOD, Anti-BYOD
The Cisco study discovered that almost half of the respondents favor BYOD over being provided with corporate devices. They were also willing to shoulder the associated costs. The polled workers were willing to spend an average of $965 for their own devices, plus $734 per year for the mobile voice and data plans. The study also uncovered that it would take a $2,200 signing bonus to entice an average BYOD worker to go with a company that does not back BYOD.
There is also a group of mobile workers who do not favor BYOD. Cisco reported that 30 percent of mobile users polled preferred corporate devices. A quarter of BYOD workers would rather use devices which were provisioned by the company, while 15 percent said that they were not productive when using their personal devices.
The anti-BYOD thinking stemmed from the fact that corporate-owned devices are backed by IT support, while BYOD more or less resembles a DIY undertaking. That is why Cisco recommends that companies must reorganize their BYOD program for all employees.
The Cisco IBSG report said, “By enabling BYOD for those who want it, and providing company-owned options for those who do not, companies can help BYOD workers increase their productivity, while allowing others to work the way they are most comfortable.”
BYODProductivity Gains
When it comes to calculating BYOD productivity gains, Cisco considers that the right metric involves the work time being gained from a worker setting up and eventually using his own device instead of a corporate-provisioned one. The rationale is that a user can work faster and more frequently with a device that he is familiar with, uses it for personal reasons, and has made the choice to use the particular device over the others.
It can be remembered that a recent Nucleus Research report,“Understanding the Hard ROI of BYOD,” explored the difficulty of calculating productivity gains from BYOD. The study also took a close look at the costs of financing a BYOD initiative and found that the trend offered little in return.
However, according to the Cisco IBSG study, 81 minutes per week are saved by an average U.S. knowledge worker who uses his own devices in a BYOD program. The average time gained across countries is 37 minutes, while executives are found to have saved three times as much time. As for BYOD users who are at the high end of the productivity spectrum, 36 percent overall have weekly gains of at least two hours, while 21 percent have productivity gains of at least four hours every week.
The extra minutes from BYOD are then assigned their corresponding dollar amounts. When BYOD laptops are included along with a strategic BYOD policy, Cisco claims that a yearly $1,650 increase per employee is possible.
Not all countries indicated productivity gains. According to IBSG senior manager Jeff Loucks, there were negative effects associated with the use of employee devices. The need for increased administration, as well as the incidences of downtime and distractions, impeded a worker’s overall efficiency.
Most (81 percent) BYOD workers use smartphones, 56 percent are tablet users, and 37 percent say that they are using laptops. But Cisco says that the main feature of a successful BYOD strategy is the use of laptops. Among the majority of knowledge workers, a laptop serves as a key productivity tool.
A corporate blog post by Joseph Bradley, chief operations officer for Cisco IBSG, explained the specifics behind a successful BYOD policy. Bradley wrote, “An astounding 89 percent of organizations allow their workers to bring their own devices for work. As a result, they are beginning to understand what is needed for successful BYOD—such as secure access, simple authentication, and clear mobility policies. But this is just the starting point. There is a more strategic approach to BYOD that yields even more benefits, from cost savings and productivity gains to critical time efficiencies.”
Bradley said that basic BYOD, which he described as the “current median level of BYOD implementation,” can produce an annual value of $350 per mobile employee. Then he brought up a concept he claimed as an ideal BYOD implementation, a strategic approach called comprehensive BYOD. Aside from productivity gains, comprehensive BYOD comes with “hard cost savings—primarily in hardware, support, and telecommunications costs.”
The Cisco IBSG study found out that such a strategic BYOD plan was better than a reactive one, wherein a company simply copes with the different types of devices being brought into the workplace. In a reactive BYOD policy, employees are left to figure out how things work with respect to the BYOD device and the business organization. Meanwhile, the IT department working with them on the BYOD program reluctantly goes along to allow those personal devices to be introduced into the organization.
With a proactive BYOD policy, however, a company can anticipate the needs of users, thus enabling workers to quickly gain access to corporate data and tools they need for work. In addition, the company can also better preempt risks and vulnerabilities that may threaten the safety of corporate data. (KOM) Link. Link. Link.