So, you've decided to ignore the whole concept of mobility managed services. Well, it's a free country, and you can make your own decisions. Know, however, that there are risks involved in any decision, and understanding the value of mobility managed services is almost as important as understanding the price of not putting these services to work. In fact, failing to put this new technology in place could represent some serious potential costs on several fronts.

What Happens When Mobility Managed Services Aren't Part of the Equation

Mobility managed services represent a wide array of benefits. When you're not putting those benefits to work, there are some severe consequences that your business may face.

You're Behind the Competition. Recent studies noted that 87% of respondents were already working with a mobility managed services provider. By passing up on mobility managed services, you've become part of the 13% that isn't, and you now must compete on a worse footing with that much larger chunk of the market that's putting these tools to work. It's bad enough trying to compete normally in just about any field; trying to compete with a deliberate disadvantage only makes matters worse.

A Loss of Cost Savings. Leaving mobility managed services by the wayside would seem like a cost savings in and of itself. After all, that's one bill that won't be incurred. However, considering the cost savings associated with mobility managed systems — the reduced use of IT services internally and so on — the net cost savings would likely be substantial. By eschewing mobility managed services, all the costs you would be paying come back and in a big way. The direct costs of mobile services, based on a report from Blue Hill Research, is a perfect representation.

• Average direct mobile costs with no management: $80-$100 per user per month
• Average direct mobile costs with internal management: $70-$96 per user per month
• Average direct mobile costs with mobility managed services: $60-$85 per user per month

A New Slate of Costs. Without mobility managed systems, the costs of mobile hit harder than ever. Start by considering the “assorted fees” of mobile service, like late fees, cost overages, and so on. The average Fortune 500 company shells out roughly $3 million per year in assorted fees by having no management at all. Those who try to manage operations in-house reduce this amount, of course, but there's still the risk that something will fall through the cracks and cause fees to strike. A mobility managed service provider, meanwhile, is wholly focused on such issues, so assorted fees are minimal if they even strike at all.

The Likelihood of Greater Downtime. Downtime is expensive. The exact dollar amount changes from business to business. You can figure out the costs of your own downtime by taking your annual revenue and dividing accordingly, but this is a false estimate as it doesn't consider the notion of lost reputation and potential lost business that goes along with it. Reducing downtime becomes a priority in light of that, and mobility managed service providers help reduce downtime substantially through 24/7 support and even service level agreements (SLAs) in some cases. While downtime can be reduced if there's an in-house support operation, this comes with downsides of its own. Why pay the carrying costs and the like on a device inventory to replace lost, stolen, or damaged devices? That's just adding a new expense to act as downtime insurance, and the point is to not bring in new expenses.

Support Gets Worse and More Expensive. Service from a mobility managed service provider is highly responsive at just about any time of the day. It has to be; those that fail to provide service rapidly run the risk of losing business to more capable competitors. Trying to handle support internally, meanwhile, means turning to an already heavily burdened IT department and working on that schedule. This means when your business closes, so does your IT operation, which means you may not see support for hours after a problem emerges. If something goes wrong at 4:30 PM on a Friday, you may not see support until Monday. With mobility managed services, however, many support issues are automated and carrier specific, making it not only easier to start but also faster to resolve. What's more, many service providers offer specific support costs as part of the agreement, some in the $5-$10 per month range. With internal support, that can be $20 per month or more.

Trouble with Policy Compliance. Chances are you have some specific policies in place concerning the proper use of mobile devices. Unless you've also got some kind of monitoring system — other than the honor system — you may find keeping users in compliance with policies is a difficult or even impossible task. Internal management is much better, but still poses the risk of users working around the policies or the policies inadvertently not put in place. Keeping policies in place with a mobility managed service provider, meanwhile, is much easier. Such policies are often established from centralized operations and put in place automatically.

How to Avoid the Risks of Not Having Mobility Managed Services in Place

There are plenty of reasons to bring in mobility managed services, and examining the consequences of not having such services is often as easy as taking the potential benefits and inverting them. Whether you want to take advantage of benefits or simply avoid the penalties of not having benefits, it all starts with having the right mobility managed service provider. Get off to the right start by reaching out to us at Acuity. We offer all the best benefits, from tech support to policy enforcement, all for a simple, per-device monthly fee. Scaling up or down is easy, and flexibility is one of many rewards. So to get the ball rolling on the best in mobility managed service provision, drop us a line to get started.