Need to Change MDMs? Vox Mobile Makes Migration Easy.

Many businesses find that they need/want to change their mobile device management (MDM) solution for a variety of reasons:

• Save money
• Consolidate their technology stack
• Current MDM no longer meets their needs
• Receive poor support from their OEM
• Transitioning from on-premises to a hosted/cloud/SaaS solution and want to shop around

Even with all those very relevant reasons, a lot of companies believe that migrating to a new MDM solution is just too difficult. And they’re not wrong. Migrating is a tedious, disruptive, and time-consuming process, especially for organizations with a large number of managed devices. It just seems easier sometimes to stick with the MDM you have, even if it isn’t meeting your needs, just to avoid the pain of migration.

To make matters even more painful, the Device Enrollment Program (DEP); now called Apple Business Manager (ABM) complicates the process of switching MDM even further and drives migration fears on several levels. Relying on end-user self-enrollment when you’re working against an existing MDM contract renewal deadline means running the risk of paying for two solutions at the same time.

The Real Cost of Changing your MDM

Relying on your end users to self-enroll, no matter how much documentation you provide, isn’t going to make migrating any easier. You can expect approximately 50% of end users to call the help desk, requiring enrollment and EMM re-enrollment support.

For example, let’s say you have 1,000 mobile devices across your organization that need to be re-enrolled into the new MDM solution …

1,000 devices x 50% of end users who call your help desk for assistance = 500 devices

500 devices x 37 minutes (average help desk call time) = approx. 309 hours

2-person IT staff handling all these calls = 155 hours each

155 hours per staff member = approx. 1 month working 8 hours a day/5 days a week

Can you afford to have your support team not doing anything else but handling re-enrollment help desk calls, instead of moving your business forward?

Avoiding Shelf-ware by Driving Adoption, Utilization, and Consumption

The key to getting your end users to take full advantage of your investment is to ease their transition experience. Here are 5 best practices to put into place for a successful MDM migration.

1. Have a clear communication path

It’s through a communication plan that you can get end users’ buy-in. Being able to provide them with the answers to their questions can ensure a smooth migration and de-stress the aspect of change with your team.

• How will the mobile device policy change?
• What are the BYOD stipends?
• What is the deadline date for using current solution?
• What happens if they don’t adopt this new solution?
• What are the new security protocols?

2. Develop—and stick to—a migration schedule

Your schedule can be a little flexible, but you build confidence when you can clearly define the steps of the process and enhance credibility for your decision to change by following to the schedule. This includes providing regular updates.

3. Accelerate adoption

The quicker the adoption, the more you get out of your investment. Sharing both the benefits, and detriments, of not adopting can motivate your team to embrace the change more quickly. Incentives, such as a coffee gift card, is a lot cheaper than maintaining shelf-ware.

4. Draw a (dead)line in the sand

Let your team know up-front that there’s a cut-off before they lose access to email, data and cloud backups. This will dictate how quickly they re-enroll in  the new dedicated SaaS environment. Encouraging end users to not wait until the last minute, means less calls to your help desk at the last minute.

5. Align it with a hardware refresh, if possible

Whenever possible, couple the migration with a hardware refresh for the best end-user experience. This will have the least impact on your employees since there’s no need to unenroll or re-enroll devices, it’s already done, so users can keep business running as usual.

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to an MDM migration, and as you can clearly see, it’s not something your internal staff will want to handle alone. To avoid shelf-ware and get the most out of your investment in the shortest amount of time, you need an experienced partner.

Vox Mobile is Your Migration Partner

Any change, especially something as big as MDM migration, can seem like an insurmountable task, but you don’t have to do it on your own. Vox Mobile has proven expertise supporting all leading Gartner MDM solutions. No matter if you’re starting from scratch with licensing or already have your licensing and new environment set up, we can help you drive adoption, reduce shelf-ware, and get more out of your software/technology investment—sooner rather than later.

For example, by leveraging Vox Mobile to drive VMware Workspace ONE enrollments through our augmented/one-time help desk service, clients have experienced a 75% increase in end-user adoption of their software investment. In addition, companies who purchase their Workspace ONE licenses from Vox Mobile, have seen a 75% adoption rate of the new technology in the first 90 days.

Our end-user migration plan and support, includes:

• Providing an end-user communication, education, and awareness plan
• Creating custom self-service, step-by-step enrollment guide(s)
• Establishing a temporary and dedicated help desk queue, delivering a scalable help desk to align with your migration schedule

Change is painless if you have the right partner on your side. Vox Mobile makes MDM migration easy.