Bring Your Own Device?

The IT Forum gives AGC members an opportunity to discuss best practices and garner feedback about products and services that increase efficiencies. The following questions and answers were taken from recent forum posts.

Q: We are considering moving away from a corporate cell phone plan and instead giving users an allowance to purchase their own phones etc. for work. I’m interested in hearing others experiences who have made this transition. What considerations should we make from a policy perspective? What impact has it had on your IT staff in supporting this kind of initiative?
Ben Stromberg
Knutson Construction

A: We've got a mixed environment here. As long as you've got sharp IT people there aren't many technical pitfalls. Since just about everything is Android or iOS nowadays, it’s not difficult to stay up to speed. We've had some issues with some phones using proprietary contact managers (HTC) that are a little tricky getting to sync. From a policy/management perspective you've got to be a bit more careful with how you handle things. Keep in mind that doing things this way means that your employees own their numbers. If one gets fired or leaves you may end up with customers contacting (potentially disgruntled) former employees, who may already be working for one of your competitors.
Nathan Jovin
Soltek Pacific

A: We have been looking at this recently. One of the concerns was actually brought to us by Verizon. Reimbursing the employee is a grey area as the employee reimbursement is looked at as revenue and they have to fill out a special form at the end of the year. Our CFO would also have to be involved with declaring these payments. From an IT standpoint, my biggest concern is going back to all these different phones and the expectation that I can support all these different devices even if we make them sign a document saying it’s their phone and they are responsible for it. A scenario I put forth was what if they are in a remote area and run over their phone? We can no longer contact them and they have to stop what they’re doing and obtain a replacement phone, which could take days. Warranty replacement is still the same so the phone may take a few days to show up somewhere. What if it’s a smartphone and they are getting email to it? Now IT is back involved setting that up as well. Although it gives the employee some flexibility on what phone they have, to me it seems more work.
Jim Gaba
Sierra Nevada Construction

A: We've also been researching this over the past several months and are putting the finishing touches on our employee-owned cell phone policy. From a tech support standpoint, we'll still support business applications on a smartphone (Exchange, ActiveSync, etc.). But if somebody drops a phone down an elevator shaft, it's up to them to take care of replacement, along with overage fees, etc.
Keith Murley
Schimenti Construction Company

A: We have talked about this and come up with several problems. 1) Who is responsible if the phone gets damaged on the job? i.e. Should the company be responsible for buying the employee a new iPhone 4s if they don’t have insurance? 2) What if the employee chooses to not have a cell phone? What if they don’t notify the company they don’t have a cell phone? What if the cell phone is lost or stolen, do they have to buy another one? 3) Is this going to really save any money? The corporate discount on the rate plan goes away (to the best of my knowledge) and there becomes little chance of getting volume discounts on phone/accessory orders. 4) (And this is a biggie) Can the company regulate what is on the employee’s personal phone? i.e. Can the employee store pornography on the phone? 5) If the employee owns the phone, do they also have a right/expectation to privacy on what the phone is used for? 6) Is the company going to mandate what phones are acceptable? i.e. iPhones, Android phones, Windows phones, non-smartphones? 7) Does the company’s cell phone use policy allow for the use of personal cell phone onsite? Will the policy need to be amended? How do you allow some personal cell phones and not others? These are huge questions with very serious ramifications. In my opinion, the benefits of having the company own the phones far outweigh the benefits of letting the employees own the phones.
Jeremiah Jilk
John S. Meek Company

A: We are very concerned over ownership of the phone number. In our business we want control over who has the phone and is receiving the calls. A salesperson, for instance, would not be a good candidate for using his personal phone. He could potentially keep all of his customers.
Jerry Humble
Penhall Company

A: Because I’ve hired senior managers, their number (and network that knew it had value) I paid them a small fee monthly for the use of the number. The phones and fees were company. When they left they took their number back. Sure there was an issue with the contact numbers they could have dumped (and probably did) to a simcard but we probably captured theirs as well in the process. This is an especially relevant discussion for mid-sized outfits that do not have robust enterprise governance protocols to live by.
Walt Gamble
Gamble Construction Services

A: In reference to your HTC issue, we have found that HTC’s latest software is tons more stable than their earlier software, so I would suggest updating. Also, if you still have issues we have been trying the below software as an alternative. We are testing this with our Motorola phones since they do not have a native sync software. One unique feature is the ability to have your text messages and also be able to send a test from your desktop.

MyPhoneExplorer
http://www.fjsoft.at/en/downloads.php

As for a cell phone policy, I do agree the benefits of having them on a corp account by far outweigh the hassles associated with giving them a cell phone allowance.
CJ Rainer
Doster Construction Company