Exploding Support Costs

Support: Largest factor in mobile cost 

When it comes to support, mobile is like no other technology in the enterprise. Mobile users have questions about a wide range of issues related to device use, network connectivity, and access to corporate information and applications. Plus, mobile users are not a homogenous group – mobile’s various user types leverage it in different ways to get their jobs done. As a result, support has to go deep and include a working knowledge of mobile in relation to a user’s function and role in the organization. 

That’s a depth of support traditional Help Desks just aren’t designed to provide, and why Day Two support, an often overlooked but critical component of every mobile deployment, is so expensive. In fact, 42% of executives cited support as the largest factor driving up the cost of mobile, according to 1 2017 poll conducted by IDG Research and CIO.com. 

For most enterprises, there seems to be no end to mobile users’ support expectations. Consider how many ways mobile is different from other enterprise technologies: 

• Unmatched upgrade velocity:  Mobile upgrades outpace other technologies’ and there are more technical components to change — not just devices but operating systems (OS), applications and management platforms as well. It feels like mobile upgrades happen every week and, for many enterprises, that is their reality. 
• Round-the-clock operation:  Because mobile is always on, users expect support 24x7x365 – another reason costs climb. 
• Regular spikes in call volume:  In addition, incoming calls for mobile support spike between 10% and 17% during the first 90 days after an initial rollout and similar increases occur with each mobile update. 
• Line-of-business accountability:  Today, lines-of-business (LOB) step up to fund mobile deployments 74% of the time. As a result, LOB executives are increasingly intolerant of productivity-crushing downtime. 

For all of these reasons, many enterprises choose to delegate mobile support to a partner with extensive mobile expertise. Delegating mobile support to a Managed Mobile Services (MMS) provider, such as Stratix, allows Help Desk staff to focus on knowledge workers’ desktop, laptop and network support and frees IT staff to concentrate on business-critical cloud, security and IoT initiatives. 

To learn more about how mobile support can keep the mobile users in your enterprise up and running, check out the “Mobile’s Most Daunting Challenge Whitepaper” and the “Mobile Support Infographic”