Business mobile devices can be a lifeline for increasing employee productivity -but how do your business customers realize value when the costs of managing enterprise mobility are so high?

This was the focus of a new study, released today by Cisco, in which Forrester was commissioned to survey over 300 decision makers who manage mobile devices and services within their company.

The survey reveals the core issues that lead to high mobility costs for your business customers and how innovative service providers are leveraging automation to help them optimize their mobility management TCO.

To find out more, you can:

• Join our webinar with Forrester on Nov. 14 (or view on demand after) -and -
• Download the full Forrester report

Beyond the bill -what's really increasing mobility TCO?

In managing a mobile workforce, subscription costs such as monthly telecom bills and overages are a central expense. But those costs make up only 33% of the typical overall mobility budget, according to Forrester's survey findings.

In the report, "Optimize Mobility Management TCO Through Automation," Forrester noted the majority of mobility expense goes into maintenance tasks like mobile services management, employee support, and managing device inventory, upgrades, and security.

The primary challenges driving up mobility TCO costs include:

• Manual processes-With too few self-serve, online tools and no way to automate processes, both you and your business customers need to invest more staff and more time to handle thousands of mobile device and service changes every month.
• Domestic and roaming overages-Without real-time visibility to monitor usage during the billing cycle, your customers may frequently be hit with unexpected charges. Nearly 90% of companies see overages on their bills every year, resulting in billing disputes, credit backs and lower NPS scores for you.
• Unused devices-Lack of visibility into usage also means your business customers may be paying for deployed mobile devices that aren't getting used. Forrester found nearly 20% of devices go unused on average.
• Costs of third-party tools-While telecom expense management (TEM) or managed mobility services (MMS) vendors alleviate part of a company's internal support burden, they add to the already high mobility TCO. High TEM/MMS costs are the second biggest challenge in reducing mobility TCO, per Forrester.

Automating away the costs of mobility management

Whether your enterprise customers have employees that run up heavy mobile data usage, travel into new regions or countries, or leave the company, automating mobility management can help them dramatically lower their mobility TCO. Service providers are already leveraging to automation to win more customers and reduce this customer care costs.

So how exactly are leading service providers enabling automation in their business customer experience?Find out in our webinar on Nov. 14, "Optimize Mobility TCO with Automation" (or view on demand after). Hear from Michele Pelino, Principal Analyst at Forrester on what's impacting mobility costs and how automation can help.  You'll also see how you can enhance your business customer experience with Cisco Jasper's automated mobility management platform - Control Center for Mobile Enterprise.