As the digital era flourishes, starting your own business becomes easier every day. Technology and entrepreneurship synergize to bring us new opportunities. As we leverage the benefits of technology, we create new efficiencies and maximize our productivity. What if we can take this a step further? Small business owners, take note, ‘Bring Your Own Technology’ is now an emerging trend that is allowing entrepreneurs to minimize their startup and maintenance costs.
BYOT is a corporate policy that allows employees to bring their own devices to work for business purposes. While every major business decision has its upsides and downsides, further examination positions the policy of BYOT as a promising approach.
Some Benefits of Employing a BYOT Policy:
- Greatly decrease startup costs and save on equipment purchases.
- Employees can handle device updates on their own time as needed.
- Employees will take more care and responsibility while managing their own devices, limiting your repair or replacement costs.
- Reduce monthly fees for data plans, etc. Some employers offer a stipend to employees for data plans, allowing them to pay a portion of the employees monthly bill, as opposed to paying the entire bill for a device.
- While a great IT team is able to keep networks up the majority of the time, downtime is inevitable. If your employees are equipped with their own devices and corresponding data plans, productivity will not be hindered as much while your network is down.
- Greater efficiencies can be established, as there is no learning curve for an employee working on a device they are already familiar with.
How to Implement It Properly
Bringing foreign devices into your network does carry a risk. Successful implementation of BYOT requires thorough policies and procedures to be established as a foundation for a safe transition. Obviously, the goal of BYOT is to increase efficiency at the workplace by reducing equipment costs, but you don’t want to do so at the cost of your productivity. Establish some clear and transparent policies for your employees regarding network usage and guidelines. Also, have a plan in place for removal of a company’s sensitive information after an employee leaves the company.
Before connecting employees’ personal devices to your network, have an expert IT support provider like Techsperts scan employee devices and clear them of any potential threats. Our IT support staff can build your network and leverage our state-of-the-art technology to protect your employees’ devices and the network they operate on. We continuously study the IT environment to stay cognizant of emerging threats and take precautionary measures to avoid them. Your employees and your business can enjoy the peace of mind knowing that their equipment and the network is safe.
As a business owner, you must wear many hats. Given that there are only 24 hours in a day, we must use each one of them wisely. BYOT allows your employees a bit more freedom and responsibility in how they use technology. The approach also saves you valuable time, as employees manage their own devices. If you’re looking to maximize your results and minimize your costs, reach out to Techsperts and we will help you set up an IT platform that facilitates BYOT.