A viewpoint by Chris Potrebka, Amaris Consulting Alumni and former Senior Consultant.
The year 2021 has put many companies’ digital strategies to the test, making digital development and transformation the primary sleep deprivers among today’s executives. More than ever, leaders feel that it is important to accelerate the pace of their organization’s digital transformation.
The Need for Digital Development
A 2021 report conducted by the Conference Board shared the concerns that keep leaders awake at night according to over 1500 executives worldwide including more than 900 CEOs. Above staying calm, acting quickly, being more adaptable and flexible, these executives added more contemporary lessons: focusing on accelerating digital transformation and becoming “Next Gen” leaders.
The report went deeper and specified that executives would like to focus on building more agile teams, adopting more flexible work policies, and embracing data to help make decisions and reduce costs when it comes to digital transformation.
To thrive in this uniquely challenging business environment comes in Modern Device Management.
What is Modern Device Management (MDM)?
Modern Device Management (MDM), or the management of the hardware assets used to access and work with data assets, can help leaders simplify these complex transformations by providing visibility, manageability, and security; leading to agility, flexibility and ultimately, the ability to act faster.
My proposition is that MDM is the lens that modern leaders should use to focus attention on digital transformation tasks that matter most to them, including agility, flexibility and acting fast.
The survey revealed that CEOs need to pivot quickly and have their entire organization rotate with them. MDM technology is embedded in devices from the factory to help accelerate this transformation and enable instant global pivots at a device level.
Apple, Microsoft and Google all include robust MDM frameworks for their devices. Regardless of how the device becomes known to the MDM, once a device is enrolled, MDM can be used to securely allow or remove access to large amounts of corporate data and digital assets.
MDM and Digital Transformation
Here are three ways to use MDM to help organizations in their digital transformation
- Accelerate digital transformation. Integrating digital technology with business strategy by changing business models, requires thinking on your feet and pivoting quickly when a new idea, market, or competitor presents itself. Through solid machine identification and appropriate context management, MDM can enable an organization to secure a device or deploy guidelines as strategy demands or modelling dictates.
- Improve innovation. In many organizations, the company’s first asset a new team member gets is a corporate-owned device. Making the setup experience stress-free to become more agile can undoubtedly help the organizations’ agility in onboarding and retaining talent. In addition, device choice, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) initiatives and self-service programs demonstrate to all your staff that you understand how important IT is to them.
- Streamline processes. Security and monitoring allow leaders to embrace relevant data about hard and soft assets instantly, whilst MDM can ensure device compliance before the following valuable idea surfaces. Technologies such as Microsoft’s Conditional Access and Managed Apple ID allow IT to seamlessly separate work and personal data.
Tools like Managed Pasteboard and Account Driven Enrollment can help ensure that corporate data doesn’t end up in the wrong app, and allow talent to work from anywhere, securely for themselves and the business. All these settings enable more essential data and content protection within managed apps by restricting data from flowing to non-managed apps and vice versa.
MDM and talented people
Finding, developing, and retaining leadership is hard. Device management is a solid foundational technology that allows companies unprecedented access to devices and secures both devices and data. Executives need to know that MDM can teach and find leaders; thus, organizations should take into consideration including MDM awareness on leadership skills.
MDM can enable your IT department to thrive
What can leaders give to their IT departments to thrive? In my opinion, target Apple’s AppleSeed for IT program. AppleSeed for IT is the best way for companies to directly access Apple’s beta releases and technology resources.
After years of invitation-only access, the AppleSeed for IT program is now open to individuals using Managed Apple IDs. It allows companies using Apple Business Manager to get ahead of the competition by allowing early access to beta software and a direct feedback line to Apple. Here are the features of AppleSeed for IT:
- AppleSeed for IT is designed for IT administrators and managers who want to test Apple beta software in their network environment.
- AppleSeed is to IT what Apple’s developer programs are to developers.
- AppleSeed is fantastic for a corporate IT looking to embrace Apple’s management and security ecosystem truly.
If executives can convince IT to get to the point of incorporating AppleSeed to expand the knowledge on management of Apple devices in their organization, they can be confident that, at this point, they are ahead of their competitors.
In drawing to a close, the last year has completely reshaped the way companies work and the need for tools like MDM to improve the agility, flexibility and ability to act faster in a competitive work environment.
Want to learn more? Discover our Modern Device Management capabilities and our partnership with Apple.
