Mobile Device Failures on the Rise Across US Enterprises According to B2M Solutions Survey

1 Oct 2019

ATLANTA & ABINGDON, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mobile device failures are having an increasingly significant impact on the day-to-day operations of businesses across the US, according to new research released today. Over half (51%) of workers polled in the 2nd annual State of Enterprise Mobility Survey, which was commissioned by B2M Solutions, reported experiencing at least one mobile issue per month that hinders their ability to do their job.

These problems are still on the rise, with more than a third (37%) of workers saying the number of issues they’ve experienced with mobile devices over the last 12-18 months has increased. The research reveals that the top three problems or causes of device failure as stated by workers are: unreliable network connections (45%), battery failure (41%), and applications crashing or becoming unstable (40%).

The impact of these failures is significant in terms of employee well-being, with two thirds (66%) of workers reporting anxiety or increasing levels of stress when issues with their mobile devices prevent them from doing their job, an increase from 39% of workers in last year’s survey.

This is also hurting enterprises when it comes to productivity, with 95% of all workers affected by mobile issues stating that it has negatively impacted their productivity. Meanwhile, 37% of workers have taken at least one day off in the last 12 months due to the stress of not being able to do their job because of mobility issues, more than double from last year’s survey (16%).

“B2M highlights the problems experienced by line workers in the Total Cost of Ownership models VDC has been promoting for 10 years,” said Eric Klein, Director, Enterprise Mobility & Connected Devices at VDC Research. “This recent research by B2M suggests the problem may be far higher than what IT sees, and is, therefore, a significant cost to the business which must be attacked using proactive visibility tools such as what B2M’s Elemez brings to the market.”

“Mobility is a business-critical asset across most enterprises today, yet this research clearly highlights that mobile device failures are high in volume, negatively impacting productivity, staff morale and costing businesses revenue,” said Gary Lee, Chief Revenue Officer of B2M Solutions. “The research also reveals a clear gap between the issues impacting frontline workers and visibility of these among the IT department.”

“While 95% of workers affected by mobile device issues say it has hindered their productivity, only 33% of IT workers believed this was the case. This is where businesses need to go beyond mobile device management and implement solutions that provide them with actionable insights and real-time visibility, across the board, into the mobility issues impacting their workforces. Proactively spotting and fixing problems, and in some cases even predicting them, is the key to better management of business-critical mobile devices and applications, and the user experience for all mobile users.”

To request a copy of the 2nd annual State of Enterprise Mobility Survey, visit https://b2msolutions.com/2019-state-of-enterprise-mobility.

Notes to Editors

B2M Solutions conducted an online survey of over 550 US companies in July 2019 using an independent market researcher. The pool of end-user survey respondents was screened by the provider to ensure they depend on a mobile device to do their job daily, while IT worker survey respondents were screened to ensure they were in charge of supporting mobility in an enterprise with a minimum of 500 mobile devices. The average number of devices supported within each enterprise surveyed was 3,880, with respondents coming from vertical markets including Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, Telecoms, Transport and Utilities, among others.

About B2M Solutions

Since 2002, B2M Solutions has been providing the tools those in charge of mobility deserve to deploy and manage enterprise mobility. The company’s inaugural product, mprodigy, is an MDM solution still used by large enterprise customers today. B2M’s Real-time Visibility / Analytics solutions, Elemez, was developed as the company saw the shift beginning towards widespread use of mobility and the evolving business-critical needs to go beyond MDM / EMM to manage mobile devices in real-time. Elemez is used by enterprise customers around the world to go beyond MDM and ensure support of mobility can shift from reacting to end-users’ problems after they occur (when they are by definition suffering lost productivity and other costs), to giving the real-time visibility needed to proactively manage all devices and users. To learn more, visit: https://b2msolutions.com.