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Smartphones have innovative user interfaces and applications; and significant processing power and storage capacity. And most owners would not ever be without their mobiles. Given those factors, consider a company that you buy products or services from that could benefit using 2D tags.
This massive adoption of smart devices has created a huge base of multi-tasking users, and a market for companies to tap and target. Touch-navigate devices running on 3G and 4G networks, combined with innovative technologies like 2D tags (QR Codes) create business opportunities and threats. That is, they create opportunities for competitive advantage while destroying older ones. For example, according to Pew Research, newspapers have seen ad revenue fall 26% during the 2009 and 43% over 2007 to 2010.
Take a position: Smartphones can be an asset to a business but should they be allowed in an enterprise? BYOD (bring your own device) is convenient and cheaper but should the enterprise strictly control all devices?
Expert Answer
In my opinion, a personal smartphone should not be allowed in an enterprise due to the following few reasons:
1. Privacy and Security – A company named Decisive Analytics has conducted a survey in 400 IT firms and according to the result, nearly 50% of these enterprises that allow employee-owned smart devices to connect to the company’s network have experienced a data breach. These days, smarts phones have capabilities of working as a PC and sharing, editing, and copying information is trivial tasks for the users leading to threats for privacy and security on company related information.
2. Integration and Management – It will be a difficult task for the IT employees of the organization to make provision for service when employees are free to choose any device of any platform as per their choice. Implementing regulatory frameworks related to integrity and security on all platforms could be a challenging task as well.
3. Call and Phone Quality – managing and receiving voice calls is of prime importance and using company data in the device will cause call drops and frustration during working.
4. User Productivity – personal usage of smartphones could bring disruptive results in sectors such as health care.
Finally, the total cost of ownership may increase as we should not only consider the costs that are saved due to not procuring special devices for employees but it must also calculate the hidden costs resulting from the lack of durability, the potential for theft and loss, and support/ accessories requirements for making a consumer-grade phone suitable for business purpose.
