The ROI of BYOD

Nucleus Research has been on a hiring spree lately and that has me rethinking the old topic of “Bring Your Own Device.”  The formalization of our previously informal remote work policy combined with our office move from Boston to Miami has left us with employees near and far. We were an early adopter of the cloud, so getting an employee technically integrated into our processes is a trivial, and location agnostic, matter. Putting aside the tax and health care issues, configuring and delivering a new PC to that remote worker is the only real step in the onboarding process.

Now normally sending a PC to a new employee is little more than selecting the most current model and having it drop-shipped to the employee’s location.  We can talk them through setting up Outlook and downloading a few software applications over the phone.  But with so many new PC’s we’re now formally tracking serial numbers and affixing asset labels. We’re also hiring a growing number of Apple fans insisting their way is the best (it isn’t, but whatever…).

And that has me wondering… If our primary application is Microsoft Office and almost all other applications are cloud-based, how many employees really want, or need a company PC?  Not only that but if the employee leaves the company in the future, do we really want that PC back?  Rather than track corporate assets it looks like it might be more effective and deliver a greater ROI for the company and employee, to offer a one-time stipend for a new employee to use to purchase the PC of their choice.  We’ll start testing the idea.