When considering your organization’s inventory, you’ll quickly realize that you have a lot of devices, device types and operating systems (OS) in your environment. You might be reading this from a laptop, desktop, tablet or smartphone and wondering how to manage it all. The answer is surprisingly simple: You need a mobile device management (MDM) solution to help you keep track of your devices and the users they’re assigned to.

11 Key Stops Along the Mobile Device Management Journey

To help you along this journey, here are 11 best practices for implementing an MDM solution.

1. Check yourself before you wreck yourself: Before you begin thinking of the various ways to manage your devices, you must first understand what types of devices are in your environment.
2. You don’t have to go it alone: Make sure you choose an MDM tool with a strong partner network that you can rely on to execute your strategy, or a framework to support you before you begin your rollout.
3. Try before you buy: No matter what, it should be easy to get started with your MDM solution. Make sure yours offers free access to a full-production portal where you can begin enrolling devices and testing features in minutes.
4. Knowledge is power: Whether you already have some experience or are getting set up with MDM for the first time, the learning process should be quick, intuitive and engaging. Since every solution is configured differently, the process can sometimes be a bit confusing as you go from one solution to the next.
5. Going from big picture to nitty-gritty: No matter what you need to keep track of, your MDM solution should be accessed through a single pane of glass where you can see endpoints, end users and everything in between.
6. Automate, report and remediate: With sensitive data on both corporate and employee devices, you should be able to know and control what is accessed. Reporting tools must provide in-depth information about device inventory, security risks and compliance.
7. Lock it down: Your MDM solution should be able to set up specific guidelines for accessing secure data, and it should take actions in case a device is breached, lost or stolen.
8. Only the right apps: With the advent of a custom home screen, your organization can dictate what apps will appear on your corporate devices and limit access to nonessential apps.
9. Policies — the spice of life: An MDM solution should offer a customizable policy that can be built upon previous iterations and accommodate an unlimited number of policies.
10. “You used how much data?!” A major pain point with company-owned devices is cellular data usage. With the rise of streaming video and music services, data usage can grow out of control pretty quickly, and you’ll be stuck with the bill. Your MDM solution should be able to integrate with all the major carriers in your region.
11. Plays well with others. Your MDM solution should be able to integrate with mobile device manufacturer solutions, such as Android work profiles, Samsung Knox, and Apple’s Device Enrollment Program (DEP) and Volume Purchase Program (VPP).

A Cognitive Approach to MDM

These practices are covered in more detail in IBM’s white paper, “11 Best Practices for Mobile Device Management (MDM),” along with tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your MDM solution. Of course, you’ll have to leverage your enterprise’s needs, but as the administrator, you must also ask, “What will my MDM do for me?”

A cognitive device management solution does most of the heavy lifting for you. Rather than manually creating workflows and setting up remediation actions, a cognitive approach to unified endpoint management (UEM) simplifies the process by letting you know what is happening and requesting permission to take action.

Download the white paper: 11 Best Practices for Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Make Every Step Count

In the ever-changing environment of IT, it’s important to stay abreast of emerging developments in the mobile landscape. Knowing how to handle new trends, devices and threats will give you an advantage no matter what, and choosing a mobile device management solution is a logical step in this process.

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