In an age of cloud computing, mobile working and apps that run our work lives, mobile device management offers businesses a one-stop-shop for all IT management, assets and more.
But what is Mobile Device Management? And how can your businesses benefit from it’s advanced array of features.
What is Mobile Device Management?
Mobile device management, often shorted to MDM is a way to control your businesses IT assets (phones, tablets, computers, laptops etc) from one centrally managed portal.
MDM cloud-based software is used to link your companies devices to a single management platform, giving you and your IT team complete visibility of your entire IT fleet—whether they’re deployed in the field or in the office.
Each device is hooked to your MDM portal via a configuration process (which you can do yourself, or we can do for you). During the configuration process, the mobile device management software will push customisable configuration profiles to the device.
These profiles can contain applications to download, customised wallpapers and lock screens, passcode protections, GPS tracking configs and a huge range of other features.
Mobile device management is compatible with:
- Android tablets & phones
- iOS devices
- Windows devices
- MacOS devices
When your devices are all linked, they are displayed in a centralised portal, with gradual access to all your devices, or an overview access to do bulk changes or push new configurations to your entire IT fleet (without having to recall devices to your office and do it manually).
What Does Mobile Device Management Software Do?
Our mobile device management software comes with a whole load of features that enable your business to take full advantage of your IT assets.
- Deploy Specific Apps to your Devices
Cloud software and apps are crucial part of any business. With mobile device management software, you can deploy applications to all of your devices to ensure all of your teams have access to the apps they need.
Deploying apps from your MDM means uniformity throughout your IT fleet. Whether you’re deploying specific sets of apps to different employees (for example, managers may require different apps) or just deploying a core set of applications to everybody.
Using mobile device management also locks down the Play or App Store—giving you greater control of additional apps and preventing users from downloading anything they like onto the device.
- Increases Device Safety and Security
Utilising features such as encryption and by enforcing unlock passwords you can keep your assets secure.
Our MDM software gives you the ability to create a secure enclave on the device, keeping vital work data separate and secure from the rest of the device, on a secure and encrypted part of the storage.
- Theft Prevention
Mobile device management software gives your business complete control of your IT assets, and has plenty of built-in features for theft prevention.
Using MDM, you have full visibility of all your devices, including their GPS location. You can even set the GPS monitoring to be as frequent and as accurate as you like—particularly useful when they’re deployed on site or in the field.
If a device does fall into the wrong hands, our MDM software has a lost and stolen mode, making the device useless to anyone who might steal it. Lost and stolen mode bricks the device, and displays a message and phone number so that the device can be recovered in a timely manner.
In a worst case scenario, you can use the MDM portal to remotely wipe the device, removing any sensitive information and applications or logins.
Even features like custom home screen messages and wallpapers help deter potential thieves, showing them that the device is clearly tracked and monitored by your business.
- Remote monitoring and control
When deploying large fleets of equipment, it can be difficult to keep record of who has what, and where they’re being used. MDM takes the headache out of IT management, by giving you a total overview of all of your IT assets, where and how they’re deployed and what users have access to.
Using the intuitive dashboard, your IT team and managers have at a glance data readily available, and map view shows the individual GPS locations of all trackable devices, handy for nationwide deployments or on-the-go logistics monitoring.
The full asset list allows your team to drill down into individual devices, showing full data and controls of each device for fine tuning any deployment. You can even schedule regular reports on a wide variety of data points to report back on workflows, logistics or more.
- Lock down devices to a single app
Some specific deployments only require a single app, such as hospitality deployments (tablets in hotel rooms) or manufacturing (devices linked to production lines or software to drive machines). These deployments often make use of kiosk mode—which locks the device to a single specific app, preventing users from accessing other parts of the device.
Putting a device in kiosk mode is the most restrictive type of deployment, but is invaluable to those requiring a heavily restricted device.
Benefits of Mobile Device Management Software
Mobile device management software has a huge range of benefits to businesses of all shapes and sizes. Making deployment easier, locking down devices and keeping them under your control to name just a few…
Easier Deployment of mobile devices
Using a mobile device management software makes deployment of IT devices much earlier. Without MDM, devices have to be individually configured and setup, making it a time-consuming hassle to deploy them in large quantities.
By linking all your devices to an MDM software, you can deploy set applications, configuration profiles, restrictions and more to devices seamlessly. This dramatically reduces the rollout time and resource.
Don’t want to configure devices yourself? We offer a bespoke configuration service on new devices, hooking them up to your portal, deploying apps and configuration profiles. When you receive the devices, they’ll be pre-configured and ready to rollout straight out the box. We’ll even put the screen protectors on for you!
Better security for your devices
Mobile device management vastly improves the security of your IT assets. Without MDM, you’re relying on spreadsheets to keep track of where your devices are. Using our MDM software, you’ll have total realtime visibility of the GPS location and status of all of your devices—taking the guesswork out of managing them.
Other security features such as password enforcement, remote wiping, encryption and more ensure you can keep the device safe during deployment. If your device ever falls into the wrong hands, you can play alerts and send messages as a deterrent, and keep tabs on the location should you need to retrieve it.
Uniform configuration across all devices
Configuring devices manually is a big chore. In the laborious task of adding apps and changing configurations, it’s inevitable that some elements of your process will be missed.
Utilising an MDM for your configuration ensures that devices are uniformly configured—with settings, applications, restrictions and even wallpapers and passwords set consistently throughout your fleet.
Keeping devices work-focused
There’s nothing worse than deploying work phones or devices to your teams, and they become more of a distraction than an asset. Keeping devices work-focused is a key benefit of mobile device management software.
By locking down devices to work apps only, and restricting certain functions within the device, you can limit the use case to work only, helping focus staff on their task at hand, while still providing the necessary tools and equipment they need.
Who Might use Mobile Device Management?
Our mobile device management software is used by businesses across the UK, from all different sectors and industries. Here are a few of the most common…
Construction
In an age of cloud computing, BIM, 3D modelling and other cloud services, construction companies are relying more than ever on mobile devices.These devices often come in the form of mobiles or tablets.
Many of our construction customers make use of the MDM for centrally managing and monitoring their device fleet. Devices are often deployed across loads of sites, all around the country, and GPS tracking ensures they can keep tabs on where devices are, and how they’re being used.
Construction companies also like to deploy specific apps to their users, from simple email apps to BIM and modelling applications and drawing software/tools. As these apps are deployed uniformly, your site teams have access to the tools they need for their projects.
Healthcare
Healthcare is one of the largest sectors that make use of MDM. Mobile device management software makes light work of large scale deployments in hospitals, across NHS trusts or surgery federations.
Digital healthcare is a growing industry, rather than traditional paper-based working, healthcare providers are moving to tablets to keep track of patients and improve their workflows. MDM allows these devices to be centrally managed by your IT team—keeping them uniform and organised.
Security is obviously an important factor for the healthcare sector, and keeping information encrypted and behind enforced passwords ensures that health data is managed and stored effectively. Utilising all the built in tools of our MDM software, healthcare businesses and organisations can safely, easily and securely move to digital healthcare.
Hospitality
The hostility sector have been using tablets and mobile devices for years. From restaurants and wait staff taking orders to hotel check-ins and even more random applications such as guests inputting number plates to validate parking.
MDM allows complete control of your devices, ensuring staff use them for the intended purposes only. It also ensures that they’re kept safe, with geo fencing and GPS tracking features.
Kiosk mode is often used for guest-facing applications. For example, hotels are now choosing to provide guests with a tablet or iPad to provide a more immersive stay. Using our mobile device management software and kiosk mode, these can be locked down to a single app.
Education
IT is a huge focus for the education sector. With so many jobs revolving around technology, there is a big push for IT literacy in schools and colleges across the UK. Part of this is issuing mobile devices to students.
Linking these devices to a mobile device management software gives you total control over them, full visibility of applications and reports on the devices.
Safeguarding is an important issue when giving students IT assets such as iPads, tablets or laptops. With MDM, you can restrict the content that students have access to, and lock down the device to specific education-focused content or apps.
Software
Some of our larger clients that utilise MDM are software companies. With a huge focus on software developing and making their product the best it can be, there is often little focus on the rollout and hardware the software sits on.
Our MDM software is helping these software businesses deploy their products across a wide range of sectors and industries, with applications pre-installed on the devices.
A recent example is Feebris, a digital healthcare provider, whose software helps free up NHS hospital beds by allowing patients to triage and monitor their health at home. Feebris use mobile device management to deploy their vital application across their devices.
With hundreds of devices linked to the MDM, Feebris can centrally manage their entire fleet, with the help and guidance of Bytes Digital’s technical support team.
How to Setup Mobile Device Management
Setting up a mobile device management software can be a complicated procedure. That’s where we're here to help.
Our team are experts in MDM and device configuration, and will setup your MDM for you. Let us know how you’d like your devices configured, and our team will create bespoke deployment profiles ready to suit your requirements—we can even configure managed Google Play services with applications to your requirements.
When your purchase any equipment from our hardware wholesale team, such as new phones, tablets etc, our technical team can configure them to our MDM portal for a streamlined pain-free rollout.
We’ll also offer ongoing technical support, helping with additional rollouts, adding new devices, making configuration changes and more.
