Did you know that 63 percent of businesses believe enterprise mobility management (EMM) is the most significant factor in gaining a competitive advantage?
But what exactly is EMM? And what’s the best way to implement it in your business?
What Is Enterprise Mobility Management?
To define it as best and simply as possible, enterprise mobility management is a set of tools, policies and services that allow your workforce to use mobile devices for business processes, everyday work and communications.
Regardless of your business size, EMM provides you with the foundation and flexibility to grow, stay productive, and provide better services for your customers.
In this blog, we’ll give you a 2-minute run down of everything you need to know about embracing a modern, mobile workforce.
Defining Your EMM Policy
Before your business can begin to embrace modern working practices, it’s essential you spend time defining policies for your employees. Think about the following:
- Which devices will you allow your employees to use? Can they bring their own or will the company provide them?
- How will you manage your portable devices? Whether it’s Mobile Device Management (MDM), mobile hypervisors and containers, or desktop virtualisation, it’s important you lay down a plan for managing, securing and connecting your devices.
- How will you train your employees on enterprise mobility management best practices and security?
- Which tools will you use to assist your efforts?
By building your business model around the core principles of your EMM policies, you’ll be able to better align your strategies and make more informed decisions.
Choosing the Right Tools
You wouldn’t expect a plane to launch without the right equipment. Nor would you assume a pilot could fly a plane without the right flight training. The same goes for enterprise mobility management.
Your employees might have the right policy and devices in place, but they’ll never be able to work in a streamlined, productive way without the right tools, platforms and support.
Intuitive, cloud-based suites, such as Microsoft 365, offer the perfect platform for agile working. Collaborative online applications, such as Outlook, PowerPoint and Teams, allow your employees to share work at any time and on any device, without compromising productivity.
In fact, Office 365 has been proven to save each employee an hour per day.
Ensuring Security from the Start
Did you know that insider threats account for almost 75 percent of security breach incidents?
When it comes to ensuring your employees are safe, secure and well-managed, implementing a solid EMM security plan is essential. This should form a central part of your company culture and should help you decide which right tools to invest in. These include:
- Identity and access management (IAM). IAM allows you to have complete governance and visibility of your IT systems, ensuring you can restrict and approve access whenever you need to. This transparency ultimately makes you more aware of security threats, should they arise.
- Multi-factor authentication. Only the right people should ever handle your most critical data. Using varying degrees of biometric authentication will ensure that no unauthorised users can gain access to your systems.
- Firewalls. Sometimes the most obvious security is still the best. Cutting-edge firewall software, such as SonicWall firewalls, actively reduce security risks and vulnerabilities. You can use these tools in virtual systems to automatically analyse and capture communications and data exchanges, helping detect and prevent serious breaches. This is especially useful for businesses implementing an enterprise mobility strategy.
Don’t Skimp on Enterprise Mobility Management
Keeping pace with change is an important part of any business. Embracing mobile working will not only satisfy your workforce, it will give your company a competitive edge, too.
But allowing your employees to use their own devices without specific policies, tools or security measures will only hinder your progress.
To get the most out of mobile working, it’s essential you avoid knocking together a haphazard enterprise mobility management strategy without the right support. Building with a clear plan in mind will elevate your chances of success and help you work towards a more secure, productive, and free-range work environment.
