How Zero Touch Deployment Boosts Competitive Edge in the Marketplace | Samsung SDS

Zero touch deployment (also known as zero touch provisioning) has been a hot button topic with the rise of remote and hybrid work worldwide. Remote work is here to stay for the foreseeable future, so it’s important to ensure that any employee can get the gear and services they need to get up and running quickly. This can help organizations maintain high levels of productivity and eliminate downtimes for employees that have lost or broken their original equipment and during upgrade or reclamation activities. This is vital for organizations, especially those that deliver corporate owned (COBO/COPE) devices to their employees, although bring your own device (BYOD) environments also bring unique complexities that can benefit from zero touch capabilities. Mobile device usage — which was already trending upwards in the business community — has also risen dramatically, making quick deployment of mobile devices vital to organizations. But how does it work, and why is it beneficial for organizations to adopt zero touch deployment into their models?

Zero touch deployment explained

Perhaps not shocking to many, zero touch deployment does exactly what its name suggests. It enables your organization to send devices directly to your end users without requiring your IT team to provision it beforehand. Essentially, once employees receive their new managed device or get approval to onboard their BYOD device, all they have to do is turn it on, following simple instructions sent automatically, enter their existing credentials, and the phone, tablet, laptop or other device automatically configures itself. This applies to everything including applications, policies and security settings. This allows your employees to be ready to work and be productive in a matter of moments, without having to wait for the long process of an IT team configuring the device before receipt.

The benefits of zero touch deployment for mobile

Zero touch deployment comes with a long list of benefits for your organization. To sum it up, it makes the lives of your IT and service teams easier while being simple for your end users. By automating your provisioning process for devices, you remove human error from the equation. It simplifies the processes that it takes to get from point A to point B — to become fully operational and ready to run. Some of the key benefits include:

● Quick and automated configuration of devices, including apps, policies and security at any point of the device lifecycle. This includes adding new apps or policies after the device has been configured, which can assist with your mobile device management strategy.

● Less time spent by your IT team, help desk, and service employees configuring devices, and less time spent by your end users getting their devices up and running with your organization. This has the benefit of giving your employees more time to focus on their business goals instead of focusing on the technology.

● Greater flexibility for your administrators to enforce policies and automate compliance monitoring without needing to utilize multiple systems or manually run reports. By having the option to set policies or push new apps out to end users or quickly deploy security patches automatically, administrators can help your organization make the most out of its technology. This allows your organization to have a high degree of flexibility when it comes to providing your employees with assets, as well as enforcing company usage policies.

● Higher levels of productivity can be achieved by your organization through zero touch deployment systems as automation takes the time out of much of the manual work associated with deploying and provisioning mobile devices for use. Automation and self-service can also reduce the time it takes to get an end user back up and running after an incident like a broken/lost/stolen device.

● Reduced costs due to the higher levels of productivity that zero touch deployment provides to employees and the reduction of help desk calls and IT resources required to handle life cycle management.

How to know if a zero touch deployment model is right for your organization

Zero touch deployment models are a good choice for any organization, but are best suited for organizations that want to maintain policy compliance within their device fleet, as well as have the flexibility to quickly deploy new or replacement devices to their end users. Any company that has a mission critical need to get and keep their employees up and running quickly should be considering this technology as part of their mobile device management strategy. The ability to quickly configure devices, both new and in the field, helps companies to quickly adjust their policies and configurations on the fly - while also being more flexible in their security posture.

For mobile devices, this can make all the difference. For example, consider the following two situations, one with an organization who hasn’t implemented zero touch deployment (example 1) and one with an organization that has (example 2).

Example 1: Gina, a VP of Sales at First Finance Bank, uses her mobile device consistently to check her emails, stay in touch with clients and keep watch over her calendar while on the go. She is a high-touch mobile user who needs her phone to stay connected and productive. One day, her corporate device breaks down and she quickly needs a replacement. Unfortunately for Gina, she now has to call her help desk who then has to send tickets to multiple people in the company to get direction and approvals. Because of this she has to wait for a few days while her IT team gets a new device set up, provisioned for her level of access and sent out to her and then has to figure out how to get her data off the broken device and return it. This has an impact on Gina’s productivity for the time that she doesn’t have access to her phone.

Example 2: Lee, a VP of Sales at Second Finance Bank, also uses his mobile device consistently to keep track of his emails, calendar and clients. He, like Gina, is a high touch-mobile user who needs his phone on hand. Similarly, his mobile device breaks down unexpectedly and he needs a replacement. However, Second Sales Finance had invested in a zero touch deployment system and, after Lee started the workflow via a self-service portal, immediately sent him a replacement phone. Once the automated backup that is part of the workflow completed, his broken device is wiped and a return shipping label to send the device back for repair is emailed to him Lee turns on his newly arrived phone, enters his credentials and is back up and running same day/next day as though nothing ever happened, minimizing his productivity loss.

The ability to get your employees back on track with minimal disruption or downtime can be vital to your organization’s success, and zero touch deployment systems excel in ensuring that devices can be rapidly provisioned with minimal disruptions and setup time for your end-users.

Samsung’s revolutionary new Zero Touch Mobility platform

To help alleviate the growing need for organizations to have better control over their mobile strategy, Samsung has created an application and managed service offering that helps organizations manage mobile devices from cradle to grave. Our Zero Touch Mobility (ZTM) offering is a native app to ServiceNow and provides hyperautomation for the entire lifecycle management of your COBO/COPE and BYOD device fleet, including zero touch deployment and easy to use end-user self-service. It also helps to simplify your logistics processes and enhances the productivity of your users and your organization as a whole. This solution provides all of the benefits that zero touch deployment brings to companies, and enhances them with new levels of service and eases the workload and complexity for both your IT teams and end users. Some of the key features of this product include:

● Automated workflows which can help your organization seamlessly automate device procurement, order management, forward/reverse logistics, UEM/EMM enrollment/unenrollment, automated device health monitoring and support, and device locking and/or wiping all from a single point of access.

● Strong inventory management tools which sync with Samsung Knox, Apple Business Manager, Google Zero Touch as well as 3rd party UEM and EMM platforms, to automatically manage the lifecycle of your devices. Utilizing integrations to multiple siloed systems ZTM keeps your inventory hyper-accurate and gives you total visibility into usage and compliance.

● Easy mobile management to let you set rules for enrollment, unenrollment, locking and wiping as part of an automated workflow. This puts the power of self-service in your employee’s hands, reducing unnecessary helpdesk calls.

● Advanced analytics help to track your device inventory and requests through a single dashboard, as well as keep watch over the health of your devices across the world. With huge possibilities for customization, your organization will be able to keep track of your mobile device metrics all from a single source.

By providing end-to-end lifecycle management from a single control tower, Samsung’s Zero Touch Mobility solution eliminates siloes in your device management strategy and eliminates the amount of swivel chairing that your employees need to do in order to manage their mobile devices. This greater level of control helps organizations make sure that nothing falls through the cracks when updating firmware, replacing devices or supporting field issues, such as lost or stolen devices. By utilizing automation throughout the lifecycle of every device, organizations can dramatically reduce the costs associated with mobile device management, gaining up to 3x ROI. For more information on how Samsung’s Zero Touch Mobility solution helps organizations with more than just zero touch deployment, click here or watch the video.