As remote work and cloud-based solutions continue to gain in popularity, more and more companies are shifting to a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) model of communication and collaboration. Allowing your employees to use their own tablets and smartphones for mobile collaboration will ultimately result in productivity gains and financial savings, but you might find yourself contending with growing pains as you transition out of a more conventional on-premises strategy. Here are a few crucial tips for establishing a healthy and helpful BYOD culture.
Security
The rise of BYOD conferencing and collaboration has made it easier than ever for your employees to transition between work spaces while remaining focused and productive, but blurring the line between personal devices and company tools can create security risks if you’re not careful. No conferencing and collaboration solution is 100% secure, but sending employees home with their work definitely increases your exposure to breaches and leaks. It is imperative that you create and enforce a clear set of guidelines for BYOD use. You can go only so far in managing an employee’s personal device, but you must establish security standards that keep sensitive company data protected.
Centralized Management
It used to be that your IT specialists had complete control over all conferencing and collaboration technology. Their jobs might not have been easy, but they could at least keep track of who was using what, as well as when and where they were using it. BYOD collaboration throws a wrench into this system. How do you address a security weakness across a whole network of different devices? When your cloud-based conferencing service rolls out an update, how do you ensure adoption by your remote employees? You should seek out a conferencing solution with centralized management tools that automatically deliver updates to all endpoints and allow IT administrators to monitor system and user status. It is inevitable that you will relinquish some control with a generous BYOD policy in place, but that doesn’t mean you have to cross your fingers and hope your employees are keeping up their end of the bargain.
Interoperability
The success of your BYOD conferencing strategy will live and die by interoperability. The whole point of a mobile-first collaboration solution is that it gives your employees the ability to communicate whenever and wherever they want, on the devices they feel most comfortable with. This approach will fail if those myriad devices can’t connect to each other. A cloud-based mobile solution like Prime Call Cloud UC will eliminate any concern you might have about incorporating different devices and endpoints into your collaboration loop. No matter what kind of tablet or smartphone your employees and clients favor, they are all given equal access to the many splendid features of this Starleaf-powered solution.
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