In line with other support organisations, SThree decided to let staff use their own devices for work. Hornbill helped manage the initiative

THE CHALLENGE

Global business processes throw up many challenges to global organisations — not least is how to connect staff in different offices on different continents. As the world is becoming increasingly more mobile, one solution is to implement a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, whereby employees use their own mobile devices to link into the business remotely, giving the ability to work more flexibly and, hopefully, efficiently.

Last year, following a proliferation in the use of mobile devices by the staff — and in line with the trend followed by many IT and service organisations — specialist staffing firm SThree decided to formally go down the BYOD route. 

The recruiter has come a long way since the launch of its first company, Computer Futures, in London in 1986 with a staff of four. Today, the international group, which specialises in IT, engineering, energy, pharmaceuticals and banking & finance, boasts 64 offices on five continents. 

Managing and supporting IT for multiple offices in one country has its own difficulties; giving access and supporting more than 2,200 users in offices ranging from North and South America to the Middle East and Australia seems daunting to say the least. 

The man tasked with just this challenge, Marc Christophides, support service delivery manager at SThree, told Recruiter: “Because we’re a global company, we needed a solution to work everywhere as there was a lot of dead time between client visits to international destinations, for example.” More than ever, in the fast-moving, quick-turnaround world of recruitment, staff need constant access to services such as email, recruitment-related software, telephony and virtual desktops. For a company, adopting BYOD reduces not only the outlay on the latest handheld devices, but it also cuts down on the cost of delivery to all parts of the globe — not to mention when the hardware goes missing or computers are damaged in transit.

SThree had already adopted an IT support management (ITSM) system from software specialist Hornbill in 2011. With the implementation of BYOD, Christophides needed to address the challenges around data security, scalability, support and, most importantly, automation. Hornbill suggested its Supportworks software to help SThree roll out BYOD to its workers worldwide.

THE SOLUTION

The first step was to get take-up from the SThree workforce across the globe. Hornbill’s Supportworks helped Christophides market the service internally through emails and campaigns, highlighting the flexibility and ease of use. One of the advantages was SThree’s ‘Good Messaging’ app, created by app specialist Good Technology, which controls email and calendar settings for employees’ devices. This means wherever in the world an employee is, they can access their emails and calendar meetings on their smartphone or tablet.

Even though SThree is a people business, it relies on its database and data sharing to grow its business. SThree created an app that could be used on handheld devices. Data security was an important consideration, but as apps are self-contained, there are no support costs involved. Pat Bolger, chief evangelist at Hornbill, explained that the “Supportworks software integrates the apps and manages the system” by providing an interface for the user.

However, the next step was how to roll out access to the app, quickly and globally. SThree and Hornbill created a policy approval document, which users have to formally accept before they can download any app. Then, Bolger told Recruiter, “if you are at an airport and request an app, you can be connected within 10 minutes”. And the beauty about it being an app, he added, is that because all the information is contained within the app in the Cloud, “if a phone [or any device] gets lost or stolen, the user can be disconnected straight away”. Christophides added: “Supportworks automatically removes access from the user if a person leaves the business.”

With the help of Supportworks’ automation of the project, SThree was able to roll out BYOD worldwide, managing activation of authorised apps to 1,100 devices in only three weeks. The automation was key for Christophides. “Once an employee leaves the app ‘dies’— automatically,” he said. “Apps are completely device independent. [Supportworks gives] automated business approval, and as it’s automated with other tools, it gives a great audit trail.”

He added that SThree would be “missing a trick” if they didn’t go down the BYOD route. And Bolger agreed, telling Recruiter: “It’s been really, really good. They’re really happy with it. It’s not about your device, it’s what you do with it.”

Key Lessons 

Marc Christophides advised that any global solution that supported BYOD needed to take into account local governance or legalities in a particular location. Hornbill’s Supportworks automates any approval problems, wherever a user is based

Would you like to be involved in The Challenge? Contact Vanessa Townsend at [email protected]