In case you didn't read yesterday's entry, I made the argument that companies could go fully individually liable (IL).  Provide a monthly stipend to employees (based upon HR records) and voila...no need for wireless expense management.  Too bad that's just unrealistic...at least for the time being.  Now while I did make the argument about a month ago that the IL/CL debate is moot, as long as you manage devices, I did also talk about how organizations still need to manage those devices.  This is where the importance of expense management kicks in.

My sense is that, for the time being, there will still be a large community of people who will expect their company to reimburse them for at least some of the use of their device.  There, in and of itself, is why wireless expense management will be necessary (because not all companies will want to just give out a flat stipend).  Let's fast forward a few years though.

We are now in the not too distant future where a majority of people have discontinued their landlines and are now using a mobile exclusively.  Organizations are also recognizing the fact that they may want (at least for a subset of their workforce) to provide those pepole no desk phone...enter the world of Fixed Mobile Convergence.  This notion of having your work number on your mobile and being able to leverage mobile unified communications will be a boon for the mobile workforce.  Regardless of who owns the device, the organization will need to have access to that device (regardless of the other management issues).  For this reason alone, companies will need to look at their (wireless) telecom expenses.  I'm not going to even get into international voice and data roaming - that's an obvious place for expense management that will always exist.

So in conclusion, (I'm trying to keep this short today), the IL/CL debate is less about expense management and more about the other components of mobility management.  Wireless expense management will be something that organizations will always need because a) there's no single approach that will work for all organizations; and b) mobility adoption will only increase in organizations, and that will require financial governance that will be simplified through wireless expense management solutions.