DENVER – A survey commissioned by wireless device management provider Reason Inc. and conducted by nVision Research of corporations that use wireless devices revealed that half of them have no centralized way to monitor which employees are using which devices – and more than half admitted that controlling wireless equipment is a problem.
The survey found that 62.5 percent of those asked don’t audit employees’ wireless use at all, or have no centralized means to perform the function. Despite the lack of a centralized system, 60.4 percent of respondents plan to increase their budgets for wireless services during the next year.
Jeff Kohler, chief executive officer of Reason, noted that companies are paying more for wireless use than they should because they have no centralized management system.
“If companies don’t put centralized systems in place now, they’ll end up wasting thousands, or millions, of dollars. For every dollar a customer spends on a wireless device management service, the company will typically get back three to five times that amount,” Kolher said.
One survey respondent said that 7 percent of its audited accounts were for people who had left the company.
Other findings included 43.7 percent of respondents said their employees only have minimal knowledge of the features offered on their wireless devices, more than 60.4 percent anticipate budget increases for wireless services during the next year, and 60.5 percent said they have a widely dispersed work force using wireless devices either throughout the United States or the world.
The survey also found the biggest problem facing companies that provide wireless service to their employees involves cost – the service or device is priced too high, it is hard to control employees’ expenditures and it’s difficult to compare rates between plans and providers.
The survey involved 50 corporations representing 350,000 employees and 120,000 wireless devices of all kinds, including mobile phones with and without Internet capability, pagers and personal digital assistants.
