Enterprise mobility is a tough game, especially when businesses are operating out of multiple locations with a diverse workforce. Enterprise IT teams and decision-makers are often overwhelmed with the daunting variety of devices available in the market for business use and making the right call for choosing the devices, provisioning them, extending support and management becomes a whole new responsibility. Additionally, the number of employee devices knowingly or unknowingly used for enterprise use is staggering. The BYOD trend is huge and employees use their personal devices to accomplish daily work tasks. 

The modern workforce is mobile. It is remote, location-independent and working out of their homes, or a vacation home or even a beach. Taming security threats impending on these devices operating on unknown networks, often far far away from the physical location of the office further brings the need for a ‘one-stop solution’ into the spotlight. 

This is exactly where MMS or Managed Mobility Services come into play.

What is Managed Mobility Services (MMS)?

Managed Mobility Services involves the end-to-end process of making a business a mobility-equipped enterprise. This includes the procurement of the devices, deployment of these devices by configuring the right set of business apps, tools and content, management of these devices along with the software, apps and data lying on them and virtually bridging the connection between remote workforce and the enterprise.

Managed Mobility Services arose out of the dire need to help IT decision-makers to zero on the right set of devices, integrations and applications pertinent to their specific business needs. Android devices, the most popular enterprise mobile solutions are launched afresh every year with diverse hardware + software combinations, in multiple cost ranges which makes device procurement a task in itself. With the requirement of enterprise device inventory varying for each team and task, the IT teams have to procure and manage diverse device types remotely. The management of these devices is a challenge on its own and this is where MMS providers step in.

Managed Mobility Service providers help out the enterprise IT teams by demystifying the complexity of device management, especially of a diverse device inventory, helps to bring the frontline or remote workers into the enterprise radar, facilitate communication to make keep them engaged and productive and collaborate files, databases and business resources that were earlier limited to exchange over PCs. The Managed Mobility Services deliver integrations, applications, extensions and rescues over mobile devices via mobile apps ensuring the security of the corporate data and devices.

MMS, MWM and MDM: The difference

MMS is often confused with Mobile workforce management and mobile device management. The primary difference of MMS- Managed Mobility Services is that it looks after the enterprise mobility from stage 1- which is the procurement of devices, software to enablement of the workforce- remote or on-premise. MWM primarily focuses only on the field employees who are working out of the office premises.

MDM or mobile device management is however an integral component of both MMS and MWM since it looks after the IT administrative side of device management of the entire device inventory used in the enterprise.

The types of services included in Managed Mobility Services include:

• Sourcing and logistics management
• Mobile service management
• Device and system management
• Application and collaboration management
• Security and content management
• Program and financial management

Point to Remember while Choosing the right Managed Mobility Services Provider: 

• Check if the MMS provider fits into the existing enterprise IT landscape and is capable of handling the number of devices, device fragmentation, network, application and security requirements.
• After opting for an MMS, IT teams do not want to spend time manually configuring the integrations of the existing apps used in the enterprise to the newly acquired devices. Look out for an MMS provider that has automated integration capabilities in place for all the apps your enterprise loves and uses.
• Choose an MMS provider that is customizable- meaning it can be scaled up or down depending on the enterprise requirements at various stages of the business lifecycle.
• Choose the MMS provider that has an MDM partnership with a trusted MDM provider. Majority tasks post-procurement are going to be supervised via MDM and hence, this can be a game-changer. 
• Don’t underestimate the value of support. The MMS provider is essentially going to run the show for you and if there are any hiccups along the way, you want to make sure that they are available with assistance at any time of the day. Read reviews, evaluate the support quality of the MMS provider before making the purchase. 

Scalefusion MDM has partnered with various MMS providers who can provide end-to-end mobility management services with Scalefusion as their trusted MDM partner. If you are looking for an MDM solution that also provides Managed Mobility Services, get in touch with us!