Mobile devices have had increased acceptance in the workplace over the last decade, successfully improving and simplifying business processes across different industries and sectors and creating multiple disruptive innovations. Nonetheless, enterprise mobility strategies and bring-your-own device (BYOD) policies haven’t always enabled extraordinary user experience for everyone. Perhaps, it’s the lack of strong mobility policies and the right set of tools for policy enforcement that prevent effective IT security governance, visibility and control over BYOD and mobility practices.

Here’s a list of 10 key elements needed to be considered when establishing mobility policies at the workplace:

1. Select Appropriate Mobility Solution

To begin with the right approach to applying BYOD policies, companies need to select the appropriate combination of mobility management models that properly fits their business needs and mobile use cases. Failing to do so will only foster mismanagement of mobile apps and its data, compromising security and reducing the accessibility to business resources.

2. User Experience Comes First

Mobile devices have brought innovative changes in the daily life of millions and also in the way work processes are executed. Understanding the user’s needs and preferences while creating an enterprise mobility strategy will allow you to craft effective solutions to manage devices, control network access, ensure compliance & security and most importantly fulfill the user’s expectations.

3. Avoid the Quadruple Bypass

One of the biggest challenges in enterprise mobility is the lack of visibility and inability to control sensitive data when BYOD user’s go directly to the cloud using consumer-grade devices.  Providing users with solutions that are tailored to meet their needs, serves as a great deterrent to avoid the quadruple bypass problem and eases the delivery of a better user experience.

4. Analyze the Service Delivery Strategy

It’s important for enterprises to develop their mobility strategies taking in account the different types of apps and services, mobile users can employ. Implementing a blended experience of containerized solutions and virtualized access makes possible for users to handle multiple application types and thus helps to maintain security and visibility of the dataflow.

5. Automate Mobility Needs

Employees upgrading or replacing devices, transferring to other branches, changing positions within the organization and many other situations, are all common occurrences that can be automated for an improved experience. The automation of these processes can drastically enhance the overall performance of projects, increase the productivity and availability of employees and also reduce the costs throughout the enterprise.

5. Choose the Right Networking Requirements

While a sophisticated security protocol can help enterprises to protect their information and control all the inputs and outputs of data, it can also be detrimental to the user experience with its multiple security layers. Customizing the networks settings of containers and apps can provide a seamless experience for the user, lessening the nuisances throughout business activities and guaranteeing compliance of the security policies established.

6. Classify and Protect Data

Leaving an enterprise’s data unmanaged it’s a recipe for disaster and so is the failure to realize where the most sensitive data of your company resides. Enterprises are encouraged to effectively protect data by employing a classification model that complies with the company’s security governance, which will in turn, give the organization the ability to measure an assess key business metrics efficiently.

7. Define Ownership and Roles

Successful BYOD programs define a clear distinction between IT and users roles and responsibilities, also assigning appropriate ownership between personally-owned devices and corporate-owned devices where is due. If a committee is not reviewing these processes or an appropriate matrix isn’t created to address required IT specifications, organizations are prone to delve into uncertainty, misunderstandings and inefficiency.

8. Enable Compliance

Enterprises are required by today’s standards to comply with a myriad of security policies, laws, controls and regulations that bring compliance challenges to corporate networks. To successfully apply a BYOD policy in an organization, companies must keep up to date with the current best practices in the enterprise mobility industry as this will promote greater auditability, access control and security.

9. Be prepared for IoT-related changes

Internet of Things (IoT) related technologies and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are rapidly changing the lives of millions and are expected to disrupt multiple industries in the years to come. It will be essential to plan in advance reliable mobility strategies – and adaptable to any mobile devices – in order to reduce the frequency of policy changes as much as possible.