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After the transition to work from home, many companies are looking for ways to manage IT spend and ensure end users have access to the tools they need to perform their job successfully. And now that we have a few months behind us, let’s look at what the numbers are saying:
- The daily average in-home data usage has increased by 38 percent to 16.6 gigabytes, up from 12 gigabytes in March 2019. The increase can be observed across almost all device categories with the data usage of gaming consoles and smartphones increasing the most.
- Internet data usage was expected to balloon amid a COVID-19 pandemic that has forced millions to work and play from home. The data is now rolling and supporting those projections.
- Broadband providers are thus far experiencing a traffic surge between 30% and 50% across their mobile and fixed networks.
The first step in combating data abuse and implementing mobile expense management is to set policies around acceptable usage. Ask yourself a few questions:
- What is a reasonable amount of data usage for corporate devices?
- How do I alert high data users?
- What applications are the biggest data offenders?
After you establish answers to these questions, make sure you develop a comprehensive mobile solutions training and retraining program to keep your end users aware of the policies.
A few simple tips and tricks to help reduce corporate data usage are:
- Connect to Wi-Fi whenever available, but be careful of public Wi-Fi connections as these can be susceptible to malicious attacks.
- Track data usage throughout the billing cycle to ensure compliance.
- Turn off location services and push notifications.
You might ask, why not just use unlimited plans?
Frankly, unlimited is not always unlimited. Unlimited plans often induce throttling for excessive data use within a given billing cycle. And, if you’re using unlimited as a blanket solution, you’re missing out on significant opportunities to save. But managing all those plans, devices, and contract negotiations can be a headache without the proper tools and support.
brightfin’s experts can support your organization’ss mobile expense management needs. Let’s talk!