New research* has revealed that employee use of personal smartphones and tablets as part of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) schemes is costing companies more than £60 per month per device. Russell Lux, Commercial Director at teliqo, a provider of bespoke cloud-based telephony services, believes that organisations need to give greater consideration to how they finance the mobility and connectivity of their workforces:
“Over 80 per cent of the companies in the survey now permit employees to use their own hardware for work purposes, but with monthly bills of £61 per device they are running the risk of negating the productivity benefits they experience as a result. What’s more, that cost is likely to rise and rise as more people buy 4G-capable handsets and next-generation networks facilitate and encourage even greater data consumption,” he said.
“The best way to BYOD spending in check is to extend the organisation’s own telephony system to incorporate all these connected devices bringing all calls, texts, and data under a single provider. A cloud-based service that gives each employee full access to their work phone system on their personal smartphone and tablet – including the ability to send and receive calls from a single work number – can insulate organisations against the spiraling costs associated with dealing with multiple providers,” Lux continued.
A ‘Pay As You Go’ model, whereby organisations pay a bespoke price for telephone services based on the specific features they require, can help with improving efficiency while managing reduced resources: “As with any service, organisations need to be confident that they are paying only for exactly what they are using. Meanwhile, PAYG also offers the flexibility to scale a telephone service and its features up or down as business objectives or finances dictate,” Lux concluded.