Whether you are aware or not, today’s wasted data usage is financially impacting your company and it is on track to only get worse. Mobile data usage is projected to quadruple over the next four years and since most companies are unaware that they already have a problem, if left unattended, this wasted data problem is on a trajectory to sink your mobility budget. Now is the time to take proactive action to get ahead of the problem before it takes a toll on your bottom line.

The Drivers Behind Expanded Entertainment Mobile Usage

The following factors have contributed to a rapid growth of non-business usage on business-liable smartphones:

• Increasing power and capability of mobile handsets where mobile devices are now as expensive as common laptops.
• Proliferation of mobile apps create a wide range of useful functions, most of which have nothing to do with business usage.
• Increasing bandwidth and videos at the fingertips of your users makes it tempting to stream videos during or after work hours

Studies Suggest Surge in Data Usage Not from Increased Productivity

Given that the premise for company-provided mobile devices is to boost employee productivity, then it would stand to reason when there is an increase in usage of those devices it would signify a good thing, right? Wrong. The problem is that most of that increased usage is likely related to entertainment usage. Here’s how we know:

The first year in which video usage on mobile devices represented over 50% of the total data used was 2016. Accompanying this rise in video usage, there has also been a dramatic increase in overall usage which has grown 350% from 2014 to 2016. When you add the metric that streaming video on a mobile device for just under 3 hours will consume 2 GBs of data, it all starts to make sense.

Additionally, in a recent study that involved over 200 million business employee data transactions, MobilSense found that in fact, 52% of all usage occurred on nights and weekends, further solidifying mobile devices are increasingly being used for personal or entertainment purposes.

The Two Things Most Companies Lack to Control Data Waste

Lack of Visibility – Currently, carriers only provide limited transaction detail on data usage and their portals don’t provide adequate analytics to reveal patterns of suspect behavior. Furthermore, the carriers are unable to provide detailed information regarding the sites visited during a data transaction.

Lack of Control – It may surprise you to know that many companies are unknowingly contributing to the problem of data waste. How? Through the lack of explicit Mobile Usage policies. Lack of policy clarity combined with an employee’s lack of access to their monthly usage and cost keeps them in the dark when it comes to the consequences of their data usage behavior. Ineffective monitoring of employee usage further compounds the problem of the growing non-business data usage. When people know better, they do better.

Why Companies Should Take Action Now

With the roll-out of 5G bandwidth looming, projections predict that data usage is on a path to quadruple in the next 5 years. Are your mobile budgets able to absorb this rapid data growth?

MobilSense has the tools you need to help you combat the impending data boom. We start by bringing the clarity and oversight every company needs through identifying entertainment usage with metrics. Secondly, we can identify the sites visited and control what class of websites are allowed from your employee’s mobile device. To read more on the best approaches to deal with the growing entertainment data usage problem click below to download our latest white paper

‘The Data Boom is Coming!’