The Open and Shut Failure of BYOD. As a Narrative

Manager: “Hello IT Department, this is the self important manager from the Inner Tanzanian sales team”

Helldesk: ” Hello again, sir”

Self Important Manager: “My best sales person has told me that he can’t submit his forecast because his computer isn’t working”

Helldesk: “What was his name, I’ll check the case history and see what the problem was. Then we can see what we can do the help you”

Self Important Manager: “This had better be good”

Helldesk: “Ah yes. Here it is, a call from “Busy Sellingout” about his tablet. Yes, I can see that he contacted us to get some help but he has chosen the new BYOD option that your team requested we implement.”

Self Important Manager: “Ah yes. Brilliant idea it was too. Now we can all have whatever device makes us look good at the golf club on Wednesday morning. After all, we all need the right equipment to do the job of selling all the time.”

Helldesk: “Yes, right. Well, as you will certainly understand, we weren’t able to help Mr Sellingout for his HungBing 1925Ar DinglyBling because it’s not on the list of approved devices that we are able to support.”

Self Important Manager: “What do you mean “list of approved devices”, you are the IT Helpdesk, you are supposed to fix IT problems”

Helldesk: “There are thousands of possible devices, Selfimportant, I can call you that can’t I ?. Anyway, there are literally thousands of possible devices and we aren’t able to know how all of them work. So we selected five of the most common devices and we have them here to help people out. Mr Selling says that he bought it from “a geezer down the pub a couple of months back who was a good mate and all”

Self Important Manager: “So what. I need those forecasts today, the CEO is demanding the reports and if Busy’s tablet isn’t working he can’t submit them. I demand that you do something about this now”

Helldesk: “Mr Manager, there is nothing we can do. You agreed to the BYOD program that provides no support to staff using their own devices. Mr Sellingout agreed to provide his own support for the device he chose. He needs to fix it himself.”

Self Important Manager: ” But Busy doesn’t know anything about computer. He is a salesman not a computer guy”

Helldesk: “I’m sorry Mr Manager. There is nothing we can do”

Self Important Manager: “I demand that you do something”.

Helldesk: “Like what ? We don’t know anything about his device. If Mr Sellingout can get to another computer he can use that. ”

Self Important Manager: “I going to complain to the CEO about this”

……………..