Is your staff bringing their own devices and gadgets to the workplace? There are pros and cons that you need to know before you decide to adopt this practice for your business.

You may have noticed more and more of your employees or colleagues bringing their own computing devices to work—be it their mobile phone, tablet, or laptop. Or perhaps in your company or in other companies you may have seen, they have let people decide which device they prefer because they are used to it at home. You may not realize it, but this is all part of a large trend called the "consumerization" of IT, in which the influence of consumer technology is being increasingly felt in the workplace. With the wide availability of cheap but powerful mobile devices and online services, a growing number of people are being exposed to the latest technology at home first—adopting them at a rate faster than most businesses are able to manage. This flips on its head the old paradigm in which traditionally new technologies would be rolled out to businesses first, before they would find their way to consumers.

This trend, plus the increasing sophistication of young workers today and their frustration with the tools available to them at the office, is pushing some companies to adopt a "bring your own device" or BYOD policy at work. They are not alone. According to research by technology analyst group Gartner, end users, not the IT department, will soon be responsible for 50 percent of business IT procurement decisions—ultimately bringing and running their own systems on company networks. Meanwhile, according to management consultants Accenture, around one-third of today's younger generation of workers (a group called "millenials") not only wants to use the computer of their choice at work, but also wants control of the applications they use too.

The benefits companies cite to adopting a BYOD policy are many, among them:

• Savings on capital expenses and training costs in using company equipment—compensating employees instead via other means such as flexible work hours, subsidized purchases, insurance, and other benefits.
• Less management headache—effectively letting employees decide what to use releases the company from some overhead and management responsibilities.
• Improved employee satisfaction—by giving employees the freedom to use devices and applications that they prefer.

However, before you consider letting employees bring their own personal technology to the work place, be aware that there are also disadvantages, and sometimes very real dangers in doing so. These include:

• Non-standardization of hardware, operating systems, and applications. If your business operations require that some equipment is integrated with others, then BYOD can in the long run actually increase IT management costs and decrease efficiency.
• Exposing your network to malware or security vulnerabilities and breaches. When your employees bring their own devices to work, you lose important control over their security. Consumer devices often don't employ comparable bullet-proof security technologies mandated by businesses.
• Leakage of confidential or proprietary information. Employees will naturally do what they want with the data on their devices, even if it doesn't belong to them, or it's against company policies. Employees can also lose precious company data when they misplace or damage their personal devices.
• Lower economies of scale in procurement. Essentially because everyone is buying devices on their own, you miss out on the chance to consolidate purchases and lower purchase costs for everybody.

Have you adopted a BYOD policy at work? Thinking about it? Worried about this trend? If you need to understand BYOD better so you can define a policy for your staff, contact us and see how we can help.

Now that you have signed up to test drive Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, what's next? Here are a few ideas to help you get the most from your free trial.

1. Take the time to watch the instructional videos. There are some valuable tips in the videos and they are short. A few minutes of your time up front will help you get more value from your test drive. 2. Upload some of your own data. Data familiar to you will make the processes more "real" for you and your team. 3. Work through the processes that you think will help your organization the most. Whether it's sales management, customer service management, or marketing, focus on the processes that will make the most difference to productivity. Practice, so that you feel comfortable showing the process. 4. Show your team or manager. By taking the initiative to demonstrate the improvements that could come from implementing CRM, you will help them open their minds to improving the business. 5. Be sure to show them the dashboards. Set up a few of the dashboard charts the way you would use them – it's quick and easy, and they pack a punch when demonstrating the valuable at-a-glance information Dynamics CRM can provide.

By test driving Dynamics CRM online, you are obviously interested in helping to improve the processes that are holding your company back. Once you have started the conversation with the decision makers in your company, an experienced Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner can assist you in taking it to the next level. Let us help you make the most of CRM for your organization. Talk to us today.