IT has no choice but to embrace BYOD

Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) and Bring-Your-Own-App (BYOA) trends started as a clandestine effort by employees to work more efficiently and grew rapidly. Since they can’t stop the trend, IT workers are now embracing it, according to TrackVia.

Research revealed that 41 percent of employees say that the tools that the company provides don’t meet their needs, which comes as no surprise to IT, with 76 percent of IT workers claiming that they know this is why employees bring their own apps and devices.

Contrary to popular belief, our research indicates that IT departments don’t want to stand in the way of employees – or as we refer to them, Citizen Developers – being productive and efficient at work, even when it comes to bringing in outside software and devices,” said Walker Fenton, SVP of Product at TrackVia. “Rather, we found that the majority of IT departments want to work with Citizen Developers to ensure security and manageability of these devices and applications.”

After surveying more than 1,000 U.S. workers and 250 IT department employees, TrackVia discovered that both parties want to collaborate and improve business processes. Accordingly, 83 percent of employees and 92 percent of IT workers agree that IT’s role is to help employees work better and smarter.

What may come as a surprise to many is that 71 percent of IT workers say enhancing collaboration in the enterprise is a top priority, something that is also a top priority for nearly two-thirds of employees.

The challenge is getting the two groups to work together to choose business apps and services. IT wants to be part of this process, with 95 percent of IT workers admitting that they want to work together with employees to select business tools. However, two-thirds of employees say they never work together with IT on selecting business apps and services.

Other key findings in the research include:

• More than half of employees admit to bringing their own apps and devices to work to make work easier
• 67 percent of IT workers say that employees are bringing their own devices to work
• 53 percent of IT workers don’t expect employees to use only IT approved apps and devices
• One-third of employees use their own apps and devices because the tools at the company are outdated
• Employees (82 percent) and IT workers (93 percent) both understand that apps need to be secure on the enterprise network.