"By the time 2015 rolls around, it's expected that 55% of business devices will be purchased by employees, not CIOs. From healthcare to retail to financial services, companies are rolling out so-called "bring your own device" (BYOD) programs."
CNN Money, By Michal Lev-Ram, May 30, 2012
BYOD and VOIP
More and more, companies are ditching their trusted centralized IT managed devices, servers, and services, and going with consumer model, cloud-based, and perhaps most importantly, employee purchased equipment. Not only is there an obvious cost savings by reducing the purchase and management of the devices and services, but the employees are more likely to do more work on their own devices, since they are more closely tied to the device and the interruptions that it provides - whether personal or work related. Imagine the cost savings of only paying $10 for a software app instead of a $200 cell phone plus $100 per month in cell phone usage. Combined with the intangible benefit of additional work obtained from employees over the long term, the cost savings can be quite significant!
Bitnetix's VOIP platform lends itself perfectly to being part of a BYOD program. Desktops, laptops, smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices are able to run software based telephone apps that allow the device to both function normally, while also being an extension on your corporate phone system. The beauty of this is that if the device is a cell phone, then the cell phone number can be kept separate from the corporate phone number, which means that an employee can use their personal cell phone as a business phone without incurring additional costs or using cellular airtime (data rates may apply, your mileage may vary, etc).
Service Management
By managing the service and not the device, the phone becomes a corporate tool without being a corporate asset. If the employee changes from sales to tech support, you can modify their extension information on the phone server side so that their phone is now part of the technical support group instead of the sales group. If you use call restrictions, such as allowing your sales staff to both accept calls and make calls, but your technical support staff can only accept calls as part of a larger group of support people, then that just "happens" automatically on the back end. If they quit, even if it's with zero notice and they walk out the door while updating their LinkedIn profile on their phone, then a quick flip of the "disable" button on the phone server means their extension is effectively turned off and the app is locked out.
BYOD and Bitnetix
Bitnetix, VOIP, and BYOD were made for each other. By providing communication to desktop phones, stationary and mobile devices, and the unique ability to merge cell phones with corporate phone apps, Bitnetix provides our customers with the right communication at the right time, even when the devices being used belong to the employee, not the company. We encourage you to contact us to discuss how we can help replace or augment your fleet of corporate telecommunications devices with our cloud-based hosted VOIP platform using your employees' devices. You may even want to bring your own device.
Bitnetix is The Business of Communication.