As more computing power and capabilities reside in the hands of your employees, endpoints are more crucial to your business success. So you need a way to optimize the use of devices by your workers – whether they’re at the office or working from home.
That’s where UEM comes in. UEM simplifies and automates an important aspect of IT management. It also gives your employees a better experience with technology and with their jobs overall.
To optimize the benefits of UEM, follow these steps:
1. Deliver excellent employee experiences out of the box.
People have become accustomed to powerful, easy-to-use-technology in their personal lives. So they expect the same experience in their work lives.
UEM gives employees a better out-of-the-box experience. It enables them to get up and running quickly with the devices and software they use for work. And if they need a replacement, UEM enables that, as well.
UEM also supports user choice, a rising employee expectation. Team members can choose a laptop or tablet, their preferred operating system, and so on. Because you manage all endpoints through a single console, it’s no harder to allow users their choice of technology than it is to lock them down to a single company standard.
2. Line up with your lines of business (LoBs).
IT doesn’t always communicate well with other parts of the business. That’s a problem, because while business functions know their own needs, they often don’t know the best technologies to meet them. One of IT’s jobs is to translate business needs into technical requirements.
For UEM to be effective, you need to understand the needs of your LoBs. Every business function has unique requirements for endpoint hardware and software. IT needs to recognize those needs to know how to provision and manage endpoint lifecycles. That requires a focused and ongoing program for LoB collaboration.
3. Leverage technologies that drive endpoint automation.
At the core of modern endpoint management is the UEM software that makes it happen. Many IT departments still use multiple toolsets to manage Windows PCs, macOS laptops, company-issued tablets, employee bring-your-own-device (BYOD) hardware, and so on. The result? Manual processes prone to error, inefficiencies, and poor user experiences.
UEM software involves two key components. One is the UEM platform. This include tools such as Microsoft Intune and VMware Workspace ONE®. The second component of UEM is a tool to manage the endpoint lifecycle. An example is ServiceNow®, which can automate the workflow of endpoint lifecycle management.
4. For UEM to pay off, don’t forget process.
UEM needs to be integrated with the overall lifecycle management of your IT assets. Endpoint management involves a lot of touchpoints and orchestration. Without automation, you can overlook details, miss key steps, and fumble handoffs.
Automating the workflow enables you to recognize the devices and software you own, where they are in their lifecycle, and how to get them into the hands of workers. A typical new hire can take two weeks to process manually. With UEM, you should be able to get that down to two days, or even same-day.
Likewise, if a device gets broken, you should be able to get the user back up and running in a day or two at most. When we work with clients, it’s not unusual for us to reduce employee downtime by 30% or 40%.”
Ultimately, endpoint management is no longer about the device. Think about it: Employees use all kinds of devices. Many of the applications they use reside in the cloud. It’s not about the specific hardware or software. It’s about making that technology available in a way that give employees an excellent experience and lets them run your business.