Part Three: Stop wasting time setting up devices! Use Microsoft Intune

Every company collects IT devices. You deploy laptops to your employees. You may have some servers in your office. You might be issuing company phones. You might have digital assets like virtual machines running in the cloud. Inevitably, you need to track and manage all of your digital devices and assets, and especially in cases where you need to meet compliance standards.

Without proper asset and device management, your fleet of digital devices will become inconsistent and impossible to maintain.

It’s the minutes that count

Let’s revisit our fictional company, Widget Pro. Inc. John Doe, now on his third day, is mostly set up with the proper software installed on his computer. One of his more frustrating experiences has been listening to his coworkers mention random SaaS apps and websites he didn’t know that he needs to use, so he’s added them to his bookmarks one by one. He then finds out he was supposed to upload required docs to an HR platform he didn’t know existed, so he adds yet another website to his toolbar. All in all, John has wasted hours looking for websites, SaaS apps, and other online resources, and just hopes that he has pinned everything he needs to his bookmarks.

On Day Four, he’s given a brand-new iPhone to use as his company phone. John powers it up and finds there has been no prior setup or configuration, so he makes a new Apple ID with his work email to get into the phone. Later he receives an email telling him which software he needs to install, so one by one he downloads every Microsoft App, as well as Slack and a few other tools. Another hour, gone.

But the hour lost is not the biggest problem! The company phone is tied to John’s Apple account. As far as Apple is concerned, he owns the phone. If he forgets his passcode, no one can help him. Whenever Widget Pro Inc. decides there is new software employees should be using on their mobile devices, they instruct their employees on what to download but have no mechanism to verify it is done.

For IT professionals, seeing device management like this is unbearable. It’s insecure, inconsistent, wasteful, and unnecessary. With Microsoft Intune, so many hours of unnecessary and unplanned work could have been avoided.

Why doesn’t someone fix this problem?

Often, small business owners and part-time IT admins just don’t know that the tools exist and they consider the problem too small to be worth spending time solving. But sometimes it is the simple things that can waste the most time. How often have you had a new employee keep asking for links to the different SaaS apps you use on the web, just like John Doe at Widget Pro? This can be easier!  In this case, why not make that problem go away in just five minutes by deploying a bookmark configuration policy in Intune?

Microsoft Intune Configuration Policy example

It is simple to implement policies that can save massive amounts of time and money with proper device management.

Once you have the simple problems out of the way, you can start looking at how device management can automate away all sorts of pain points when it comes to configuration management and software installation.

Consider John Doe and his brand-new iPhone. All the work spent setting up that iPhone was unnecessary, and wasted time that could have been spent delivering value to customers. With proper IT management, Widget Pro Inc. could have architected it so that when John Doe receives a brand new phone, he just signs in with his Microsoft 365 account, and signs into the Company Portal app, then instantly all of his work apps start downloading in the background, his Safari is configured with the proper bookmarks, and all of the proper security policies are applied. This process saves time and frustration while also being more secure and consistent.

The magic of Microsoft Intune Configuration Profiles

Now that the iPhone is managed by Intune, the company can deploy new apps, update security policies, reset the passcode if John Doe ever forgets it, and more. For any company using Microsoft 365 and trying to use company phones, there is no excuse for not properly setting up mobile device management. You are leaving money on the table by wasting time and resources manually setting up your phones.

The devil is in the details. Software nightmares.

By using manual processes instead of a device management solution like Intune, setups are time consuming and inconsistent. You may also have multiple versions of different software installed across multiple employees, which makes each device different, time-consuming to track and nearly impossible to manage. Even more losses can be incurred if expensive licensing is involved. For example, users who only need AutoCAD LT may accidentally be assigned a full AutoCAD license, or a user may be assigned Acrobat Pro, but only the free version of Reader was ever installed. You cannot reasonably find and correct these mistakes without proper device management.

Microsoft Intune solves all these issues. By tying into proper identity management, you can deploy configurations and software to your devices based on the identities of your employees. When properly configured, when an employee in the engineering department signs into a computer, AutoCAD can automatically start installing for them. When your graphic designer signs into their computer for the first time, Adobe Photoshop can automatically install.

The possibilities with Microsoft Intune are endless. Once any company starts to accumulate dozens of devices, it is imperative to properly manage them. If not, your employees will waste time muddling through inconsistent workflows, they will get stuck waiting for the software they need, and in the worst case, your employees may spend more time waiting on IT helpdesk tickets about random misconfigurations than actually doing their work.

Find someone who continually solves for the details and be free!

Configuring Intune can be a scary prospect if you don’t have full-time IT staff. Mistakes in Intune can affect your entire fleet of laptops and mobile devices. But there are companies ready to help you implement Intune in your business. F1 Cloud Solutions has set up Intune device management for dozens of companies and has implemented device management for thousands of devices. If you aren’t ready to implement Intune on your own, we can help.