Left to Their Own Devices

Airfoil handles publicity for Dodge’s E85 Viper biofuel sports car, a provider of carbon offsets and other cutting-edge companies, so staying on top of trends is an attractive selling point to potential customers.

That’s why managers at the Southfield, Michigan, PR firm didn’t worry when they noticed younger members of their 50-person staff using their own smartphones to call customers and hook into the company intranet. Instead of blasting out a memo forbidding employees from using non-sanctioned wireless devices, they adopted an anything-goes policy and provided workers with a monthly stipend to buy what they wanted.

That kind of freewheeling mindset runs counter to traditional IT practices at many companies, where strict limits on cell phones and handheld devices are a holdover from an earlier era when centralized purchasing ruled the day.

As smartphones become more ubiquitous, and younger, digitally savvy generations march into the workplace with iPhones glued to their hands, more companies like Airfoil are realizing it’s better to switch than fight, and are changing policies accordingly.

"CIOs are struggling with the reality that they can't keep consumer technologies out of the workplace," says Sam Gross, vice president of global IT outsourcing solutions at Unisys, whose consultants champion the practice. "When I'm speaking to business audiences, I'm hearing a lot of dissatisfaction about what's being provided. They're carrying their own iPhone in addition to the Blackberry provided by IT, and they'd rather be using their own device. The reality is that in many cases, it better supports what they need to do. So why not just let them?"

Companies that have made the switch say employees are happier and costs are cheaper. "When you're paying an allowance, you can flatten out the cash flow and spend money on an ongoing incremental basis, instead of in large lumps on equipment and access," Gross says. "It's the same benefit companies got from outsourcing the desktop."

Still, the new approach is far from the norm. A 2008 survey by Forrester, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, technology researcher, found 75 percent of companies still purchase devices and plans for employees, and 66 percent restrict who gets wireless access to company networks by title and responsibility.

The policy change is so new that proponents have yet to come up with a name for it. Unisys invented the term “managed digital allowance,” while others call it "wireless consumerization" or "DIY procurement."

Airfoil Makes DIY Procurement Work
At Airfoil, employees get $20 to $40 a month to defray the cost of their wireless plans and hardware. The company pays top dollar to employees who choose Windows Mobile devices, in part to encourage them to use products made by Microsoft, an Airfoil client. The company also subsidizes the iPhone and various Blackberry smartphones, as well as other devices.

Managers receive an additional allowance of up to $350 to buy their choice of device. As a result, 80 percent of Airfoil's workers employees now use smartphones.

Airfoil pays $2,000 a month for wireless service for 50 employees, not including the cost of voice minutes or texts, which employees cover themselves. Aaron Petras, the PR firm’s IT manager, says the policy has helped control costs, though he wouldn’t say how much less the company is spending.

Best of all, since employees choose devices suited to their work styles, they're finding ways to use them to speed up response times and stay on top of goals, even when they're out of the office, Petras says. "Since we've started providing the allowance, we've noticed customer satisfaction is up,” he says. “They're getting more service, and they're happy about it."

Proponents of the DIY movement say the established model for corporate telecom – choosing a single equipment provider, operating system and set of applications – is showing its age. "It was designed in an era when the priority was to lock down the desktop PC and have everybody using it the same way, to maintain order," says Gross, the Unisys outsourcing vice president. "That model failed to take into account the reality that employees connect with technology differently and have different ways of getting things done. It also doesn't address how technology has advanced since then. We have different devices – laptops that are as powerful as desktops for example – and can do things we couldn't do back then."

At the same time, companies are relying on more web-based applications that run in a browser window, so it doesn't matter what sort of device or operating system employees use. With data and applications residing largely online, IT managers such as Airfoil's Petras spend more time blocking system intrusions than keeping track of mobile devices. As for security for all those mobile devices, he predicts a day in the not-too-distant future when he’ll be able to shut down a lost or stolen phone remotely. “The solutions already exist, but they aren’t quite cost effective for companies our size,” Petras says.

Some Call Phone Choice a Budget Buster
Skeptics say providing support for multiple devices is a staggering burden for IT staff, not to mention a massive budget buster. Typically, the cost of supporting a device adds at least 10 percent percent to the total wireless expense, says Kevin Donoghue, president of Telesoft, a telecommunications management services provider. If a data plan costs $50 a month per smartphone, support is another $5, Donoghue says. “When you add multiple devices that require support, the additional cost starts getting closer to 20 percent. If you're asking employees to get individual plans and submit expenses, I can practically guarantee you're going to spend more than you would if you negotiated a deal with the provider yourself."

But Unisys' Gross says Gen-Xers and Millennials are increasingly comfortable doing their own troubleshooting or consulting corporate or manufacturers' online knowledge bases for help. At Airfoil, the company encourages employees to manage their own devices by allocating a fixed stipend per month and leaving it to the employees to manage plans and cover any extra costs in exchange for the convenience of using their own devices.

Allowing DIY procurement and providing a fixed technology allowance does present some challenges. A plan has to be configured carefully on corporate books so that it doesn't inadvertently turn the stipend into a taxable benefit.

Also, shifting to the new approach sometimes requires companies to part ways with equipment vendors with whom they've had longstanding relationships. "OEMs don't like the digital allowance because it erodes their revenue base," Gross says.

A DIY system may not be the best fit for baby boomers accustomed to having their company hand them a device and show them how to use it. The answer, according to Gross, may be a multi-tier wireless policy, in which less technologically-savvy employees can opt for a standard device with IT support.

For the most part, though, Gross thinks workers are eager to have the same state-of-the-art technology at work that they use in their off hours. "Today, if you go to Best Buy, you'll see Joe and his 10-year-old daughter walking out with a laptop and a wireless router they're going to go home and hook up by themselves. The shift is dramatic, and we have to catch up."