Mr Reitz, what are the challenges of switching to mobile working for smaller businesses?

Ivo Reitz: These companies often want to provide their employees the same flexible working conditions as large corporations with thousands of staff, but they are often held back by their minimal personnel and financial resources and feel like there is no way they can keep up with their larger rivals. For example, a company with 100 staff and a two-person IT department that is used to having fixed workstations and desktops will incur high costs when they make the switch to mobile devices. They also have to search for hardware and software that work with each other and set it all up. For many smaller businesses, this is out of their reach financially, which is why they worry that they’ll lose their staff to their bigger competitors that are in a position to offer flexible working hours and mobile end devices.

How can businesses provide their employees the flexibility they want even if they only have limited resources?

A lot of medium-size and large companies are already leveraging the Device as a Service or DaaS concept, which is the deployment of a notebook within the framework of financing. That means there are no high one-off investment costs. Instead, the company gets the hardware it needs including all related services for a monthly fee. Customers then also profit from other services such as data wiping as well as operations and comprehensive support. Lenovo sees Device as a Service as a holistic concept that covers the device’s entire lifecycle—from demand planning to deployment, support and management to professional disposal. In the process, the customer’s individual needs are discussed and how the DaaS concept can be tailored to them.

Device as a Service seems similar to service offerings we know from our personal lives like smartphones and streaming. Are they comparable?

It’s true that we see service offerings everywhere we look these days. Most of probably have mobile phone contracts which include monthly financing, repairs and support and after two years, the customer gets a new device automatically. The same is true of streaming services. Pay a monthly fee and get round-the-clock access to high quality films and series. These kind of services are incredibly popular for the consumer, which is why it makes sense to use them in a business context, too.

Can smaller businesses also make use of a DaaS concept?

Of course. Lenovo is one of the few providers on the market to offer Device as a Service for businesses with at least two devices. They have the flexibility to decide which devices and services they would like to combine and even the monthly instalments can be adapted to suit their needs. This high degree of individuality and adaptability means that even small companies receive a solution that is perfectly tailored to them. This means that the IT department gets huge weight taken off their shoulders and the employees get a modern, flexible working with up-to-date, compatible hardware and software.

Many companies are afraid that this will all take up far too much time and that the financing will make everything too expensive. Is that justified?

The customer can always get in touch with the Bechtle team, with whom we work very closely together. We can discuss their individual needs together and how we can best meet them with hardware, software and services. That means that DaaS saves time because we help to choose the best combination  and we handle support and maintenance, freeing up companies’ in-house resources. In terms of costs, 75% of businesses using Device as Service spend as much or even less [1]. It’s an all-inclusive package that provides customers with consultation services and up-to-date devices and services, support and maintenance and helps them keep their budget in check.

Mr Reitz, thank you very much for the interview.


[1] Source: IDC, Winning DaaS: Executive Summary, 2019

 

Ivo Reitz.

Ivo Reitz is part of the channel services sales team at Lenovo. His focus is on the areas of management and deployment of devices.