About Mazars
Mazars is an international audit, tax, legal, accounting, financial advisory and consulting firm. The team in Germany consists of around 2,000 experts in Berlin, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Greifswald, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich, Nuremberg, Potsdam and Stuttgart. Mazars is ranked eighth among the leading audit and consulting firms in Germany and generated revenues of 233 million euros in 2021/2022.
Challenges
Equipping employees with mobile devices at the twelve locations presented the purchasing and IT department at Mazars with numerous organizational and logistical challenges. The procurement process was barely automated and this meant that manual effort was correspondingly high.
Requirements
Everphone was required to take over all processes involving the procurement and roll-out of smartphones and tablets. The first objective was to reduce the workload on IT, the second was to offer employees a wider choice of devices, and the third was to ensure compliance with the highest security standards.
“…Tasks that take a lot of effort, and that are no fun to complete”
In our interview, IT manager Klaus-Lorenz Gebhardt describes the burden that the procurement of smartphones and tablets presents to organizations. Being tied into so-called “bundle” contracts from mobile providers means high levels of dependence and very little flexibility.
As a result, IT is permanently occupied with recurring tasks that offer little added value and interfere with implementing digitization and the IT team’s other core tasks.
"We want to create a fun environment for employees to work in"
Employees who want a brand-new, high-performance mobile device can obtain one from Everphone. With “Choose your own Device“, they can choose the device they want – paying any price difference from the base budget themselves.
Thanks to MDM software, security settings can be defined and rolled out centrally. There is thus nothing to prevent the private use of company devices from the point of view of security. This is highly convenient for employees–as they can now use their high-end company devices in their private lives as well.
Longer usage makes ecological sense
Those who want a brand-new smartphone can “upgrade” to newly released models. But anyone who wants to continue using their current device can do that as well. Many employees choose to continue using their devices, because it saves resources and is better for the environment.
“We have a lot of devices that have reached the end of their rental term. However, we notice that the employees do not order new devices across the board–even though they are allowed to do so. (…) Perhaps this is already an expression of a changed view,” says Gebhardt, summarizing the new awareness among employees in dealing with mobile technology. Everphone’s circular model is designed for the longest possible service life and the consistent secondary use of mobile devices by design.
