How can you develop a flexible mobile device management plan?

To develop a flexible mobile device management (MDM) plan, we must first assess our current situation. This involves identifying our goals, challenges, and any existing gaps in security and user experience. We can gather valuable information through surveys to gauge employee satisfaction and preferred features, inventory audits to identify devices accessing company data, interviews with IT staff and department heads to understand security concerns and compliance needs, analytics from existing MDM tools to analyze app usage and security risks, and a review of current mobile device policies to assess their effectiveness.

For a flexible MDM plan, start by identifying your organization's specific needs, like the types of devices used and the security level required. Choose an MDM solution that supports various device types (smartphones, tablets, laptops) and operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows). Ensure the plan allows for remote management so you can update, secure, and troubleshoot devices from anywhere. Set clear policies for device usage, data access, and security protocols. Regularly update these policies to adapt to new technologies and threats. Train employees on these policies to ensure compliance. Lastly, have a robust support system to quickly address any issues that arise.

Defining your goal first and then everything should revolve around your need on what you want to achieve, be it improving device life time, increased work force productivity, securing corporate data etc.

Test it before you finalize it and based on requirement cloud or onpremise can be choosen while both has its own advantages at the end its you who will take the call, dont be in hurry carefully see security posture of the organization, which all OEM you plan to have hardware from, use their recommendation list as well to zero in onto your final outcome.

Along with defining, documenting them is also an important step where it clearly states restrictions, exceptions and review timelines for such policy which can be referred in future by anyone.

In implementation phase, not just end user even your own team who is going to mange all these devices with the help of MDM solution should be trained internally or with the help of MDM vendor, now a days most of the MDM solution has academy like concepts where your team can get certified and make most of the MDM solution. In ongoing transaction automated reports including device analytics, application usage, asset reports etc. can be used to take data backed decisions.

Other things like security compliances SOC2, ISO, AER by Google in case of Android, OEM preferred partner status where device mfg. has closely worked along with MDM solution provider to certify devices along with their solution, word of mouth in similar vertical to get clarity.