Are Your Employees Double (Device) Agents?

How many times have you used your personal smartphone to check your work email – even though it’s not set up as your official work device? Come on, don’t be shy!

While doing this is certainly not preferred by your employers, it’s a truth that is probably driving many IT departments crazy. Employees have a wide range of personal connected devices; devices they prefer­ to use – right at home and in their pocket. They want to be able to access their work life and personal life from one device instead of living life like a double agent – personal life in the right pocket, work life in the left.

According to a recent survey commissioned by Amdocs and conducted by Heavy Reading on bring-your-own-device (BYOD), the majority of surveyed* service providers (73 percent) expect to see a 10-25 percent increase in BYOD device requests from business customers in the coming year due to the recognized benefits for businesses. Cost savings, employee satisfaction and increased productivity are cited as the primary benefits of BYOD for service providers’ business customers, with almost half of service-provider respondents believing that BYOD will decrease costs and increase productivity by 10-25 percent for these customers.

Also, 52 percent of these service providers have their business customers asking for ways to split bills between personal and business use, and the ability to disable functions when they want to go into “offline mode" for their work life. The latter is a great idea for those long vacations where you really need to disconnect.

With BYOD gaining steam, the survey also underscored the need for BSS/OSS integration. Although 77 percent of respondents stated that residential and business BSS/OSS integration is needed to support the BYOD market and specific business requests, only half are able to link personal and corporate personas. The lack of BSS/OSS convergence (53 percent) is viewed as the main issue, because it prevents a single view of the customer (51 percent).

As BYOD popularity continues to increase, service providers will need to ensure that their internal systems are upgraded and ready to provide the best offerings possible. At this pace, they’ll need to implement these services quickly and securely while providing support in real-time.

Service providers will need to ensure that their own systems are upgraded and ready to provide such offerings to their business customers, and that they are able to implement such services quickly and securely, while providing support in real-time.

*The survey, conducted by Heavy Reading in April 2012, included 35 wireless, wireline and cable service providers across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Central and Latin America. 

Rebecca Prudhomme is vice president of Product & Solutions Marketing at Amdocs . She currently leads Amdocs’ entire global team of product marketing professionals focused on bringing to market Amdocs’ products, services and solutions.