White Paper Series:

Developing
Corporate Wireless Policy
by Scott Jonasz

Introduction

Enterprise wireless expenditures continue to increase. Productivity demands and the advantages represented by Smart Devices, TREOs, Blackberrys, and Windows Mobile Devices have made their adoption the corporate norm.  Yet the mandate to control expenditures (typically with overburdened and reduced resources) remains the executive command initiative.

So how do you create an acceptable corporate wireless policy while juggling productivity and expense control concerns, especially within an immediate demand and typically personal decision making environment?

With extreme difficulty is the answer most widely volunteered.  But this reply, though meant “tongue in cheek”, echoes with sobering truth.

But where to start?

Foundation and Amendment

When our forefathers wrote the constitution they did so with the prudence and foresight that their written word represented a framework and that the foundation they created would need the ability to recognize, accept, amend and evolve with time.

Corporate wireless policies are no different.

Your corporate policy must begin with a foundation of business practices that manage the wireless lifecycle from procurement to payment.  These business practices must be quantifiable, measurable and amendable dependent upon evolving internal and external factors – such as productivity demands and vendor variables (technology, pricing and service).

The foundation elements of the Corporate Wireless Policy:

• Procurement
• Acceptable Usage
• Measurement & Expense Control in Real Time

In this first of three installments we shall cover the first foundation element in the development of your Corporate Wireless Policy: Procurement

Procurement Argument: Corporate Liable versus Individual Liable  

There are two schools of thought on Corporate Liable versus Individual liable:

• Corporate liable wireless provide more enterprise control on expense by single/limited device adoption representing advantages during vendor contract negotiations – and security with data and web access control and remote shut off/erase abilities

• Individual Liable wireless dilutes the need for significant expense control by letting individuals choose their plans and devices (security is still controlled) – and by putting the burden on employees to “expense” their usage which inherently would reduce costs based upon the premise that individuals will be more cost conscious when having to pay for their usage and being reimbursed

In today’s business environment with email and web-enabled devices being the adopted norm – enterprises must adopt corporate liable policies – simply for security and proprietary control factors alone. (See the related article on “Technology's Double Edge Sword” in this issue”)

Procurement policy of Corporate Liable Devices is predicated upon the following and these processes and determinants must be decided upon as the foundation framework of your Wireless Policy.

1. Vendor(s) & Devices(s)

Your company has probably gone through the arduous task of selecting a wireless vendor or typically vendor(s) based upon the geographic and network protocol limitations of the carriers.

Mandating the utilization of one or two vendors and/or devices is not an easy task.  Due to the inherent nature of wireless being a mobile device, employees, though not responsible for the associated expenses, tend to view their vendor, device, and plan selection as completely their “right of choice”.

2. User Groups & Plans

Within most companies plan determinants are made based upon “user groups”.  Service, sales, operational and executive personnel are activated on a plan suitable to their need and/or position. 

The adoption of corporate pooling plans have blurred these lines but remain a cost effective way to reduce wireless expenditures.  However defining, adopting and implementing plan policy management by user group is a more advanced methodology for corporate expense monitoring, control and ultimately cost reduction.

3. Request, Approval & Allocation

The nature of corporate wireless procurement ranges from accept and allocate to formal requests and approval policies.

Obviously “accept and allocate” represents a “no policy” policy, and a formal request and approval process demonstrates a level of policy development – though in most cases completely dependent upon human governance and unfortunately due to workload and overburdened staff non-monitored and devoid of value.

Creating, defining and de-humanizing this phase, represents the most imperative, proactive and effective wireless policy ingredient.  Furthermore, by incorporating pre-approval budget availability and “Effect” reporting the value of this policy element is significantly enhanced expenditures are controlled, and ultimately costs are substantially reduced.

Defining procurement is the foundation for the development of your corporate wireless policy.  Once you have determined the framework of these three elements you will be ready to move on to the management of acceptable usage and the measurement and control of expenses in real-time. 

Acceptable Use

This is the most difficult development challenge because it is inherently “corporate subjective”.  Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) have long been an established principle within most enterprises in the areas of computers (email & instant messaging), vehicles, office equipment and even the 2nd floor “employee kitchen”.

The framework involved in creating an AUP does not differ tremendously and the process has been exhaustively documented and researched, but suffice to say the Wireless AUP is unfortunately a moving target and one that must be amended as new technologies become available and/or more pervasive within your corporate environment.

Examples of established wireless technologies and new amendments to wireless AUP’s:

• Wireless Data
• Wireless Web Access
• SMS / Text-ing
• Tethering * Wireless Modem
• Wireless IM
• Bluetooth
• Secure Intra-Access

Traditional web and email AUP’s had to be reconfigured to include wireless devices – especially for organizations that have deployed Blackberry’s, Smart and Windows Mobile Enabled devices.  So to establish a framework and amendable AUP for your organization the question again becomes…where do you begin?

There are two elements to be addressed within Wireless Acceptable Use, corporate & personal.

• Corporate: involves the traditional and established AUP’s for devices, access, applications, tools and company provided media involved in the performance of an employee’s responsibilities. 

• Personal: involves the company subjective and accepted practices for allowing their employees the ability to use company assets for personal or private matters.

With wireless the difficulty in establishing an AUP is compounded by the complexities surrounding the traditional inability to monitor and enforce those policies. 

The next step is defining the components of your corporate & personal wireless AUP:

• Scope                                      
• Purpose                                  
• Authorized Use                                   
• Privacy Expectations               
• Responsible Use                     
• Inappropriate Use                  
• Security                                   
• Enforcement
• Modifications
• Notifications

These AUP components establish the Who, What, Where, When, How, Why & Why Not involved in the protection of corporate and individual interests.

Monitoring these components is difficult, and certainly individual liable versus corporate liable compound the challenge exponentially; moreover operational bandwidth to review each individual invoice to monitor and enforce policy simply does not exist within today’s overburdened or understaffed corporate IT/Telecom departments.

To alleviate the operational burden some companies have established a “flat dollar” invoice expenditure amount that is considered “acceptable”. A solution that is easy to implement and monitor for exceptions, but unfortunately problematic. To contain and reduce costs and more importantly manage corporate security - wireless services and invoices must be more scrutinized than traditional landline/wireline services. A flat dollar policy fosters an environment of deficient security and invoice governance.

Therefore it is imperative from a policy and security perspective to monitor and examine each individual invoice and to establish and disseminate the elements involved with enforcement and consequences to properly implement your wireless AUP. 

Measurement & Expense Control

Measurement & Expense Control

With today’s rapidly changing mobile environment and the increase in productivity and collaboration wireless services offer, enterprise mobile proliferation will continue to accelerate.  Establishing a methodology to measure the use and expense associated with these devices will become crucial not only to manage the growing operational expense, but also as a measurement of Cost of Sale and subsequently Profit Margins.

In today’s “Immediate Access to Information” environment companies that wish to implement a Corporate Wireless Policy must institute standards for measurement and expense control. 

But how do you properly measure use and control expenses when the only way to monitor these elements is with the monthly receipt of the invoice – or more problematic – the receipt of individual expense reports?

Analyzing trending data is certainly one solution. Taking two to three months worth of usage and expenditure data and analyzing those fluctuations would provide a simplistic model to forecast expenditures and apply proactive control measures.

The problem again is time and resources. Most IT/Telecom departments are already too overburdened to develop this process, apply the analytics or even more demanding implement solutions plus measure their results. The results not based upon actual data but a trending model.

Most companies, based upon workload and unavailable resources fall into the typical enterprise “Telecom Trap” of simply renegotiating contracts as a way to control and reduce expenses – historically not the best policy.  I like the Airline Industry analogy: how well do you think the airlines would do if they decided to fix their costs for flights on an annual basis? Certainly there would be instances where the price based upon the previous year model presented positive results. But obviously, most of the time the airlines would not be maximizing their profit potential or selling out the flight if costs were too high.  So how can companies believe re-negotiating telecom costs annually is the best strategy?

The argument is the availability of real time data.  Airlines developed the “Blue” system that dynamically changes prices based upon seat availability and demand thus maximizing their profit potential for every aisle, window and middle seat.

Certainly if companies had access to real time data they could better control usage through policy development and reduce expenditures based upon actual need and demand of wireless services by individuals and across the enterprise. Learn more about PlanGuard.

In any case, measurement of your wireless usage is the only way to optimize your corporate policy in a way that does not affect productivity. Analyzing individual to enterprise effect of wireless expense (underutilization and over-utilization) is critical in controlling and reducing the continuing tidal increase of enterprise mobile costs. CEO's White Paper on ECPM.

To summarize, it is imperative in today’s telecom environment to establish, implement and continually monitor your company’s wireless policy. As wireless requirements increase and access to real-time information drive business and differentiate competition demands will rise for wireless services.  Companies that do not have a policy or a valid structure will incur high expense and cannibalize their profit margins.

Offering Evolved, Enabled, and Empowered Wireless and Wireless Management software and services.  TeleBright’s software platforms are empowered with BrightCare, the market's only proactive alert platform that monitors your telecom environment in real-time and notifies you via your chosen media when issues or opportunities present themselves. 

Copyright © May 2007 TeleBright. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of TeleBright is prohibited. The information contained herein is accurate only as of the date of publication, and is subject to change without notice.