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10.13007/433
Ideas for Leaders #433
Bring Your Own Device to Work: The Pros
and Cons for a Multinational
Key Concept
Rapid advances in communications technologyavailable to consumers has meant that employeesoften have far greater private access to sophisticatedtechnology than they do in the workplace. Is BYOD(Bring Your Own Device) - permitting employees tobring personal laptops, tablets, and smart phones towork, and to use their devices to access companyinformation a sensible policy? In theory organizationsbenefit, in practice this presents many problems. ThisIdea uses a case study of a particular multi-nationalorganization to see its response to this question.
Idea Summary
The IT innovations that have emerged on theconsumer market in recent years have led employees,familiar with the benefits consumer products offer, toexpect the same level of technology to be provided bytheir corporate IT departments. This trend, referred toas the ‘consumerization of IT’, has increasinglybrought consumer innovations into the workplace; atrend that in many companies top managementstrongly encourages.
According to research commissioned by the global ITfirm Logicalis in 2013, bring your own device (BYOD)—or bring your own phone (BYOP) is making significantinroads in the business world, with at that time about75% of employees in high growth markets such asBrazil and Russia and 44% in developed marketsalready using their own technology at work.
This trend creates several challenges to ChiefInformation Officers (CIOs) around the globe: “What ITcosts are associated with the use of mobile consumerdevices?”, “How will corporate use of mobileconsumer devices affect IT management, security andIT governance?”, and “How do we introduce an ITservice for corporate as well as personal mobileconsumer devices?”
Professor Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister from the Instituteof Information Management (IWI HSG) at the
ShareAuthors
Weiß, Frank
Leinmeister, Jan Marco
Institutions
University of St. Gallen
Source
European Conference on Information
Systems (ECIS)
Idea conceived
August 2013
Idea posted
August 2014
DOI number
Subject
IT Strategy
Knowledge Management
IT Governance
Communication
Operations Management
of Information Management (IWI HSG) at the
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and Chair ofInformation Systems at Kassel University (Germany),and Frank Weiß a Management Consultant withDetecon International and researcher at the Chair ofInformation Systems at Kassel University present a‘teaching case study’ that sheds light on this dilemma.The names of the company, people, and theconsulting firm have been disguised, as have thecompany and financial data, for confidentialityreasons.
OMEGA Group, a multi-national company with 50,000employees, wants to leverage the potential of mobileconsumer devices for corporate purposes. Therefore,the questions about cost, management, security, ITgovernance and how to introduce an integratedservice have to be addressed and answered by its CIO,John Smith. This topic is urgent because more andmore of the company’s employees, particularly theexecutives, want to use their devices for business.They want to stay current on the latest news, use arange of apps, collaborate with colleagues, customersand business partners through social media, and theydo not want to be forced to use two separate devices.
Several concerns are aired at the Corporate IT BoardMeeting, including these:
Employees would use the apps and the resulting increase in the
volume of mobile data would lead to higher IT costs. But as use
of apps may increase effectiveness and performance, how does
the company measure the costs against potential benefits?
How would costs be identified and shared between private and
company use? And who would pay for the licences needed to use
apps?
Would the company need a standard service, probably cloud
computing based, to make corporate files, which are centrally
stored within the company network, accessible on heterogeneous
devices, such as laptops, smartphones, or tablets?
How much would the use of mobile consumer devices decrease
the level of IT security the company can provide?
What are the managerial issues, for example, those related to IT
support?
What are the implications for security and cost when an
employee leaves the company?
Weighed against the problems expressed at the ITboard meeting, the OMEGA senior managementpointed to a range of advantages that BYOD couldoffer, and on balance the company decided to addressthe managerial challenges and to integrate corporateas well as personal mobile consumer devices.
Business Application
Many organizations will want to leverage the potentialof consumer mobile devices, and in any case it isdifficult to stop employees using their personaliPhones, tablets, or laptops for work. However it isclearly important not to drift into BYOD by default.Rather it is important to weigh up the pros and consand, if a BYOD policy is decided upon, to manage thedownsides effectively.
Some ways to mitigate some of the downsides weresuggested in the case study:
1. Costs – increasing IT costs can be tackled by several measures,
such as specific consumer smartphone rate plans or
communication measures, creating awareness for a cost-efficient
device usage. Thereby, usage guidelines can also help to create
certain awareness and to influence employees’ usage patterns.
2. Security – an enterprise-grade IT security level can hardly be
extended to personal devices. Usage guidelines can help lessen
the problem though.
3. Central filing – the use of common cloud based filing systems
such as Dropbox will not offer enterprise level security – however
there are several services that do and should be investigated.
4. IT support - to handle the device heterogeneity, IT support can
be done in a self-service approach by the employee.
© Copyright IEDP Ideas for Leaders 2014
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Further Reading
Why Can’t I Use My iPhone at Work? – ManagingConsumerization of IT at a Multi-NationalOrganization: Teaching Case Description. FrankWeiß & Jan Marco Leimeister. EuropeanConference on Information Systems (ECIS) (2013).
Next Generation Mobile ApplicationManagement: Strategies for Leveraging MobileApplications Within the Enterprise. OpinionPaper Detecon International GmbH (February 2011).
Further Relevant Resources
The Institute of Information Management at University of St.
Gallen
Jan Marco Leimeister profile University of St. Gallen
University of St. Gallen Executive Education profile at IEDP
