Wi-Fi and mobility specialist iPass is offering the channel a tool, designed to help their customers realise how much they are actually spending on connection fees while out of the office.
The tool, which has been dubbed with the catchy moniker of the ‘iPass Mobility Cost Savings Calculator’, has been designed for the channel to help gain more customers.
The tool will act as an education aid for customers, by showing them the potential cost savings that can achieved by “deploying a Bring Your Own Network (BYON) solution for those mobile workers who are working in a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environment”.
What this means in reality is that the tool is an online computer program resellers can direct their customers towards. The tool is hosted on a dedicated landing page where the channel partners and customers can enter a few high-level details, such as company name, annual budgets, how many mobile users, and number of mobile carriers used. The tool then calculates how much the company is currently spending and how much they could potentially save by implementing their own BYON.
The tool factors in how many of a customer’s workforce is made up of executives, road warriors, moderate travellers, and campus or office workers.
iPass is also offering the iPass Wi-Fi cost index report. This is another potentially useful option as it provides the average Wi-Fi and mobile broadband data costs by region and looks at real-world travel scenarios for business travellers, coupled with the impact of that usage to an organisation’s bottom line.
In May last year, iPass revealed it was expanding its European channel partner programme to target the mobile device management (MDM) market. These two tools should allow the channel to show their customers the real-world impact of unchecked mobile data roaming costs, which hopefully in turn drives business back to the reseller.
The tools’ release comes after iPass warned in November that more and more employees are using their own smartphones for work, and are potentially racking up huge connectivity bills.
Indeed, the company points out that mobile workers often now carry an average of 3.5 devices when they travel, and 43 percent are experiencing ‘smartphone bill shock’ when they return back to their home environment. These costs are often then shunted to employer, resulting in significant costs for the business.
“By offering this tool to our valued partners we are providing them with a new avenue for driving business and lead generation,” said Rene Hendrikse, VP EMEA at iPass.
“We’ve all seen and heard about the BYOD trend. However, businesses are starting to realise that although they don’t have the device costs anymore, connectivity fees are going through the roof,” he said. “Using the iPass Mobility Cost Savings Calculator, resellers can demonstrate to customers how they can slash connectivity costs by offering global Wi-Fi access through a BYON approach.”
To make the tools even more attractive to the channel, iPass is also providing partners with promotional text and graphics for their website and a dedicated landing page to the Mobility Cost Savings Calculator.
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