Mythbusters: The Price of Mobile Lifecycle Management

If I were to ask you what does it take to keep your mobile device ecosystem functioning in a business environment 24/7/365, the answer would probably come easy. You’d probably be able to reference managing frequent OS/application requirements or rapidly deploying replacement devices.

If I asked you, however, what is the true total cost of ownership (TCO) of these very same mobile devices and what’s the biggest cost driver, you may be thinking of your mobile spend on acquiring the devices and software/service providers for your employees’ use cases. The truth of TCO is a different story, however.

TCO is driven by three things:

• Hard Costs (hardware, software and maintenance contract purchase costs)
• Support Costs (lifecycle support services, spare pool and help desk)
• Soft Costs (lost productivity due to work disruption)

According to a recent VDC Research report, as much as 73% of your mobile TCO goes toward “support costs” and “soft costs.” To address these cost drivers, you must have enterprise-grade lifecycle management for maintaining your business-critical mobile devices. In-house IT support teams lack the agility to rapidly provision, repair, return, and decommission these devices both effectively and in a predictable, cost-effective fashion.

It’s no wonder that there is a widespread myth that mobile lifecycle management is just too costly to generate a significant return on investment (ROI). The good news is that this myth doesn’t have to hold true for your enterprise. With the Mobile Device as a Service (MDaaS) model, you can address all current and future mobile lifecycle management needs for a stable monthly per-device price. Best of all, there’s only a single point of contact for your enterprise.

This means realizing greater ROI due to a predictable spend, but also reduced downtime and boosted productivity for your personnel.