An average enterprise-class organization has approximately 68,000 mobile devices in use, including laptops, phones, tablets, wearables, and many others. In the past year, more than one-third of IT operations' time and cost was spent dealing with mobile devices. These staggering statistics are the reason why so many organizations struggle to manage their mobile fleet.
The findings come from Tangoe’s newly published report, which explores the challenges of mobile device management and the benefits of managed mobility service (MMS) solutions. The research was conducted by Vanson Bourne in December 2022, surveying 300 IT decision makers (ITDMs) from organizations with global annual revenue from $500 million to $50 billion.
More connected devices create a problem that’s been brewing for a while but has now hit a tipping point. A decade ago, the ratio of connected devices to people was about 1 to 1. That number has slowly crept up as mobile phones, tablets, IoT endpoints, and other connected devices have made their way into the workplace. The Tangoe report did a good job of highlighting how untenable the situation is and what the biggest issues are for corporate IT.
Many Challenges Exist With Mobile Device Management
The top challenges with mobile fleet management named by ITDMs include sourcing new mobile assets (73 percent) and managing mobile device inventory (70 percent), followed by mobile help desk support (61 percent) and collecting, recycling, and wiping assets (53 percent). Two-thirds (65 percent) of organizations rely on at least one type of mobile device and consider them essential to business operations. Laptops are the most essential device type, with 41 percent of companies completely dependent on them. This dependence on mobile devices is creating a greater burden on internal IT teams.
Employee Turnover and Security Are Two of the Big Problems
Another challenge with mobile device management is related to recruitment and retention issues. Various factors contributed to high turnover rates last year, many of which were pandemic related. Regardless of industry or company size, all organizations (100 percent) have struggled with mobile device management due to employee turnover.
