While it is certainly in vogue at the moment, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) is not a panacea for morale, savings, or business communications.  Nor is it easy to implement from a governance, organizational, support, or management perspective. Because of this, the CXO should carefully consider BYOD as a need rather than a want for his/her organization and then weigh the cost effectiveness vs. the required efforts. 

For example, the biggest driver for BYOD has traditionally been cost savings, yet BYOD could end up costing more once support, Mobile Device Management, stipends, and data are included; not to mention business impacts from data integrity breaches and lawsuits from governance violations.  

Before assuming BYOD fits every company, discover if the strategy would aid the type of worker you have in your field, or would make little impact.  The obvious example is a manufacturer, or any company without a very mobile network of employees. These sorts of firms are often attracted to the idea of BYOD, without realizing their business model does little to support such a change.   

So you got a call from the Cable company about providing your enterprise data services?  Their commercials tell you "We've really changed - we're ready to perform in the commercial marketplace and will even offer a 2-hour service window," but are they truly ready for prime time?

The answer is a resounding "Maybe."

First, the Good. If they already have facilities in your building, the Cable Company can probably provide service a lot cheaper than Ma Bell (for now).  Cable companies are hungry to carve out their piece of the enterprise space, and are willing to buy their way in if they have to.  If they have a separate business unit that sells to enterprise customers, you could be a big fish in their small pond as opposed to being a small fish in the large Bell pond.  Further, the new guys aren't so adept at throttling back data speeds, so there's a good chance that you may get more bandwidth/throughput than you were expecting.

Then, the Bad.  If you're looking for a nationwide solution, the Cable Company may not be a good fit unless you're really lucky.  Having and maintaining national infrastructure that lines up with your entire footprint is not cheap.  Also, the old adage that "Nobody ever got fired for picking AT&T" still rings true to some extent. The Cable Company might be able to save you a little money, but if there's a problem, your bold decision puts you at risk.  Many enterprise customers choose to dip their toes into this pool with redundant or backup services until there's a higher confidence level.

With Telecom and IT staffs increasingly strained in today's business environment, it becomes ever more difficult to monitor vendor service requests to ensure that your company's funds are in your bank rather than the carrier's.

One standard audit that Insider Analysts perform when managing services for a new client is to comb through vendor service orders to ensure that disconnect orders actually result in a discontinuation of billing. As most CIOs can attest, our clients often do not have staff to monitor these requests to ensure that billing stops when intended. Advocate's team utilizes top flight processes with best-in-class technology tools to ensure these orders are carried out within the time specified in the SLA, with no exceptions. In one instance, after conducting an audit for a new client, our analysts found a carrier who did not properly act on a new client's disconnect order for 15 months, totaling over $20,000 in false billings. 

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