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The Essential Guide to Enterprise Mobility Management for C-Level Executives

Enterprise Mobility Management is critical for 500-5,000 employees organisations to manage mobile data security, compliance and productivity.

These days, mobility is an essential component of competitive advantage.

Employees expect flexibility at work and always-on availability. But, the overheads of managing growing mobility can be significant.

Only by backing your mobility program with an effective Enterprise Mobility Management solution can you confidently maximise the return on your mobility investment.

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Assess your needs

Find out if your organisation is ready for EMM with our 8-point checklist.

Download our 8-point checklist 

Enterprise Mobility Management Overview


As a key enabler of digital transformation, enterprise mobility is changing the workplace and how we work. Enterprise mobility is now the baseline for:

  • Delivering optimal customer experience
  • Enhancing process efficiency
  • Boosting productivity, and
  • Reducing costs.

But as mobility has grown in complexity, organisations need a suite of tools to manage it. To manage and secure mobile devices, their applications, and the data that flows through them in the corporate environment, organisations need enterprise mobility management (EMM).

 

EMM is now mission critical

EMM forms your first line of mobile security defence, helping companies manage mobile technology, devices, apps, content and security, as a tool for business transformation.

EMM simplifies the process of rolling out and maintaining large fleets of devices, enabling IT teams to ensure every mobile device has the correct apps installed and that they are up to date.

EMM also allows organisations to reduce risk and meet critical security and compliance requirements while confidentially subduing potentially risky situations, such as an employee losing a device that contains commercially sensitive data.

To take advantage of the many benefits of enterprise mobility while countering the security risks, EMM is essential. EMM provides tools and technologies designed to streamline device management and reduce mobile management costs. 

Enterprise Mobility Management Definition

Enterprise mobility management is a set of tools that allow your people to use mobile devices for business processes and communications. Serving as an essential mechanism for managing mobile risk, EMM goes far beyond mobile device management. EMM enables organisations to manage and secure mobile devices, applications, and data to empower employees with flexibility and security.

EMM offers a suite of technologies designed to secure corporate data and intellectual property on employees’ mobile devices. For larger organisations, those with 500-5,000 employees, EMM provides the means to deliver insight into the applications and data being accessed by mobile devices, to seize opportunities while maintaining corporate compliance. 

 

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Enterprise Mobility Management Benefits

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, enterprise mobility management benefits are universal.

EMM enables your enterprise to become more agile without putting corporate information at risk. With an EMM solution in place, businesses can orchestrate mobility for employees, ensuring their mobile devices are secure, while also enabling users to be more productive with access to corporate network.

EMM benefits encompass:

Security

Mobile devices are the easiest way for business data to be compromised. For example, employees will use public Wi-Fi – if it’s the only way to get online – which could potentially allow an outsider to intercept data. Likewise, not having a secure lock on their phones, or using strong passwords is akin to leaving the key in your front door, allowing anyone to walk in and steal your data.

With EMM, your IT team gets the benefit of:

  • Deploying a consistent level of cybersecurity across all connected devices and maintaining oversight and control.
  • Separating work and personal apps or data from each other in order to secure any sensitive work-related data.
  • Using remote wipe functionality to remove information from a compromised device.
  • Deploying device locator services on each connected mobile device which can find lost devices or track down stolen devices.
  • Monitoring, regulating, and restricting the rights of mobile devices and downloading valuable digital assets after viewing.

Efficiency

EMM dramatically increases the speed in which an organisation can get devices to employees deployed with the right software and security settings. This frees up IT from hours of provisioning effort.  With one integrated system, you can easily configure devices online and ship to employees with enforced management. This means employees to get started right away while you can oversee all mobile devices in use in your organisation. 

Productivity

Giving employees tools to do their jobs, wherever and whenever those jobs need doing is at the heart of every modern enterprise, and another important EMM benefit.

Whether through BYOD or Company Owned/Personally Enabled devices, extending crucial business applications to employee devices allows them to securely perform business operations at the time and place that is convenient for them. EMM allows for digital communication and capability at any time and in any place, which leads to improved user productivity and engagement.

By offering flexible working, employees have more control over their schedules, helping minimise the time they spend commuting. For employees on the road, it allows them to remain connected on the go. Ultimately, when employees can work from anywhere, they can do more. So, EMM is the basis for the benefits of a more efficient worker and a more responsive workplace.

 

Compliance

Full visibility over how devices, apps, and content are being accessed and used is an important consideration and a major benefit of EMM. Having such a wealth of information makes it simpler to provide compliance details and detect unauthorised activity on devices and applications.

Enterprise Mobility Management Components

Enterprise Mobility Management is a comprehensive framework of tools for mobility management, helping give IT control of the business-related applications and data living on employees devices. 

Key components include:

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Mobile Device Management

The starting point for optimising enterprise mobility is Mobile Device Management. MDM simplifies mobile device management, even if your company’s devices are deployed across multiple mobile service providers and various mobile operating systems. With MDM tools, you can monitor, manage and secure your employees’ mobile and ensure they use their devices within your strict policy guidelines.

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Mobile Information Management (MIM)

To ensure secure information management within your mobile workforce, mobile information management (MIM) is used to regulate mobile content and manage access policies. It allows only approved applications and data to be available to your employees for work.

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Mobile Content Management (MCM)

In today’s push for flexibility, protecting confidential business information is now more important than ever. Another key component of EMM, Mobile Content Management (MCM) allows you to give your employees access to critical business content and allow them to collaborate seamlessly across any network, on any mobile device or desktop.

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Mobile Application Management (MAM) 

A central component of EMM, mobile application management allows your IT department to remotely manage the applications on a mobile device. MAM is used to install new apps, update existing apps, and manage licenses. With this tool, the IT department can remotely delete a particular app and the data associated with it, or configure security policies to a particular app.

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Mobile Expense Management (MEM)

Mobile expense management (MEM) is an effective tool to minimise billing errors, audit costs, and ensuring corporate policies are enforced. MEM solutions can help with clarifying costs and protecting any software and/or proprietary information that may otherwise be accessed should the device fall into the wrong hands.

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Assess your needs

Find out if your organisation is ready for EMM with our 8-point checklist.

Download our 8-point checklist 

Scope of Enterprise Mobility Management

As employees use more and more mobile devices to execute work-related activities more efficiently, managing this ever-expanding use of mobile devices is an ongoing burden for enterprises. With more employees working remotely and accessing information on the go, the scope of enterprise mobility management grows ever wider. As the glue that connects mobile devices to their enterprise infrastructure, EMM enables firms to perform the following:

  • Provisioning: configure devices and applications for enterprise deployment and use, remotely manage updates, and assist with device upgrades and retirement.
  • Auditing, tracking and reporting: track device inventories, settings and usage to ensure compliance with enterprise policies
  • Enterprise data protection: mitigate data loss or theft with controls for data encryption, data access rights, shared devices, application wrapping and containment, and device lockdown.
  • Support: EMM suites help IT departments troubleshoot mobile device problems through inventory, analytics and remote actions.

 

EMM is the first line of mobile security defence

When it comes to securing the mobile enterprise, EMM is essential. Using various components of EMM, such as MDM and MAM, is the only sure way to limit damage and regain control over lost or compromised data and devices without affecting employee productivity.

Whether mobile devices are business or employee-owned, organisations need to take steps to secure sensitive information and corporate IT infrastructure access from these devices.

With EMM, the IT team can provide the right level of control, protection and compliance for each type of data and device without placing undue restrictions on the ways people choose to work. 

Trends in Enterprise Mobility Management

EMM has evolved from simply protecting corporate data on mobile devices to empowering the workforce to be more productive on the go. As part of its continual evolution, EMM continues to accommodate an ever-changing set of device platforms and mobility trends in the workplace. Three of the fastest-moving enterprise mobility management trends include:

 

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Trend 1: IoT

Digital transformation is heavily reliant on collecting, analysing and applying data to business challenges – so it’s likely that EMM requirements will need to expand to embrace IoT devices.  Printers, automated lights, streaming media players – all represent a potential security risk, particularly if they are portable and are used outside the corporate network. Using EMM, will enable the identification of IoT devices, and apply security configurations to protect data and the integrity of the network.

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Trend 3: Unified endpoint management

With a seemingly endless line of increasingly powerful and sophisticated mobile devices entering the market, and turning up in the workplace,  EMM needs to cover these more advanced mobile devices. With the growing complexity of enterprise mobility management, unified endpoint management (UEM) is emerging as a smart solution.

UEM unifies and centralises how enterprises manage a fleet of deployed devices. This includes smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, wearables, IoT devices and anything else connected to the enterprise environment. Many UEM tools include the features of EMM and MDM and integrate other aspects of IT management, including identity and access management.

And with the coming 5G revolution around the corner, you can be sure that the number of devices connected to the enterprise environment will skyrocket. 

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Trend 2: Artificial Intelligence

Thanks to AI, smartphones are about to get smarter which has significant implications for enterprise mobility management. AI is going to mean new applications and new device types. AI will alter and improve the business logic within and take advantage of advanced user interfaces with speech and visual gesture recognition. As patterns of behaviour are identified, organisations will be able to improve processes and the user experience.

Enterprise Mobility Management vs. Mobile Device Management

The short answer to enterprise mobility management vs. mobile device management? EMM offers a complete solution that works to secure every aspect of the device and the information on it. Whereas, an MDM solution simply provides management controls over a device.

The use of software to manage mobile devices in the corporate environment has grown in parallel with the adoption of smartphones and tablets in the workplace. As mobile devices have also grown in complexity and sophistication, the software functionality required to manage them has also evolved. So, for most organisations, it’s not a question of enterprise mobility management vs. mobile device management. Mobile device management is a part of  enterprise mobility management.

Mobile device management lays the foundation for enterprise mobility by providing a centralised platform to remotely manage different device types. Once a device is enrolled on the platform, IT is able to provision devices and enable:

  • Configure device security and data settings, and remotely troubleshoot issues
  • Set up location tracking to locate lost or stolen devices, monitor device for malware, and report issues in real time
  • Perform remote data wiping in the event of a lost or stolen device
  • Enforce security policies such as password protocols, or block installation of apps
  • Prevent data loss with automatic data backup.

Mobile devices have evolved from communication tools to powerful business tools used for various complex business applications, enterprise mobility management (EMM) is a more evolved, sophisticated, and scalable set of features to manage enterprise devices, apps, content, and information.

Most EMM solutions offer MAM, MCM, MIM App Wrapping, and other features in addition to MDM, and provide:

  • Comprehensive control over corporate data, apps, emails, and platforms
  • Universal enterprise-grade security
  • Customisable management tools allowing access levels to be set for each employee, device, or network
  • Scalability to support evolving devices and services. 

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