ROI from MDM – how to calculate the benefits of implementing Mobile Device Management

Whenever a company considers implementing a new IT solution, the questions inevitably arise: ‘How much will it cost?’ and ‘How much will we make from it?’ This approach makes sense, of course, because – from a purely business perspective – every dollar spent on IT projects should pay off. The same is true for a Mobile Device Management (MDM) system. In this article, we’ll show you how to translate MDM implementation into financial benefits and calculate the ROI for the entire investment.

What is ROI in the context of IT solutions?

ROI (Return on Investment) is a metric that measures the profitability of an investment. In the case of IT projects, it compares the costs of implementing and maintaining a solution with the financial benefits it generates. The formula is simple:

Who values the ROI from MDM and why?

In the context of MDM, ROI is important to several levels within the company, for various reasons:

• For IT administrators and managers, ROI will be a strong selling point in discussions with senior management and can help secure the budget needed to implement the system.
• For a CTO, knowing even an approximate ROI makes it possible to assess whether a new system aligns with the company’s long-term technology development strategy, whether it will be scalable in the future, and whether it will integrate with the solutions currently in use within the organization. Integration issues or limited scalability can increase the project’s costs.
• For CEO, ROI provides an answer to whether MDM will increase the company’s profits by reducing operating costs and whether it will mitigate business risks, such as potential data breaches or penalties for non-compliance with regulations (e.g., GDPR, NIS2 Directive).

To calculate the ROI from MDM implementation, we first need to determine where the benefits of such an investment lie and what the costs will be. We’ll start with the first ones.

Financial benefits of implementing MDM

Some benefits can be easily converted into specific amounts.

Reducing the time required to deploy devices

Let’s imagine that an administrator needs to set up 50 new smartphones for field workers. Without MDM, they would have to manually log in to each device, install the necessary apps one by one, configure company accounts, and set security policies… Each phone would take at least 30–45 minutes to prepare.

With MDM, all of this can be done from a single console, remotely, and before the phone is even taken out of the box – this way, the entire fleet can be ready in three to four hours.

Let’s assume that a specialist at a medium-sized company earns 80 PLN per hour. Setting up 50 new devices manually would take him 30 person-hours, but with MDM, it would take just 4 hours. In this scenario, the company would save approximately 2,000 PLN in labor costs, and the administrator would have plenty of time left over for other tasks.

Remote support – no travel costs

Let’s take a logistics company as another example – one with its headquarters in Warsaw and several warehouses across Poland. At one of these warehouses, an issue with the inventory-monitoring tablets emerged: the devices slowed down and froze more often.

The administrator works from headquarters daily. If the failure is serious and affects equipment across the warehouse, a specialist will likely need to travel to the site to resolve the issue. This results in travel costs (several hundred zlotys) and a lost workday. With MDM, however, the admin can remotely connect to any device and take control of its desktop. All of these costs are eliminated.

Control over mobile data packages

People don’t often think about this, but if a company pays for data plans for work phones, it can easily lose track of data usage – especially when employees use mobile data instead of Wi-Fi. While traveling abroad, for example, they might stream music, which can sometimes lead to an unpleasant surprise: extra charges on their mobile data bill.

MDM solves this problem by allowing you to completely turn off mobile data transmission while roaming, block users from changing data limits, or enforce app installation only via Wi-Fi.

Intangible benefits of implementing MDM

In addition, some benefits cannot be quantified on a one-to-one basis (though one can try!). However, they have a huge impact on the security and efficiency of the entire organization.

Higher level of cybersecurity

Security comes first, which is the main argument in favor of Mobile Device Management systems. Modern MDM platforms with MTP (Mobile Threat Prevention) mechanisms allow you to monitor the status of all mobile devices connected to the console – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – and, most importantly, they automatically respond to detected incidents.

Thanks to MDM, a company can also enforce security policies on its devices: for example, require users to use strong passwords, enable data encryption and automatic OS updates, or block the installation of apps other than those truly necessary for work and sourced from trusted providers.

Why is this so important? According to the Cost of a Data Breach 2025 report published by IBM, the average cost to companies from a data breach last year was $4.4 million, or just under 16 million PLN.

Of course, not every company is at risk of such serious breaches, but even a ‘minor’ incident resulting from someone hacking into a company account via an employee’s poorly secured smartphone can cost tens of thousands, because this must include the cost of repairing damage to the infrastructure or potential fines from the Personal Data Protection Office. The very fact that implementing MDM facilitates maintaining security and compliance with regulations (both national and EU) is already a huge intangible benefit.

Protection in case of physical loss or theft of equipment

McAfee conducted an interesting study in which it calculated that every year, one in twenty company smartphones is lost, either accidentally or due to theft. Is that a lot? Yes, considering that each such situation carries the risk of a data breach. Let’s also remember that good equipment is a significant expense: a top-of-the-line smartphone costs 2,000–3,000 PLN, and a new MacBook at least twice that much.

If a device is lost, MDM will allow you to locate it and, perhaps, recover it. And if that’s not possible, the admin can remotely wipe it to ensure that company data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Increased productivity of employees and devices

In many companies, implementing MDM means that employees… work more efficiently. There’s a simple reason for this: they don’t have to spend time updating apps or configuring work tools and settings on their own. If they encounter any technical issues with their device, the IT department can resolve them remotely in just a few minutes.

Analysis of MDM implementation costs

Let’s now turn to the other side of our ‘profit and loss statement,’ namely the cost analysis.

Purchase of MDM license

The main expense will, of course, be the license – this is how the vast majority of MDM solution providers bill customers today, regardless of whether the system is hosted in the cloud or available on-premise.

The cost of such a license typically ranges from $3 to $9 (about 12–35 PLN) per device per month.

So if the license for a single device costs 16 PLN and the company has 50 such devices, the annual expense is 9,600 PLN.

Implementation and configuration

Purchasing a license isn’t everything – after all, someone has to set up and configure the system to meet the organization’s needs. Most providers offer initial technical support: either for an additional fee or included in the license price. Nevertheless, implementation time, which is essentially the working time of IT specialists, must still be factored into the costs.

Employee training

Another issue is training costs. Not only administrators but also employees who use MDM-managed devices daily should be prepared for the new system’s implementation. After all, they need to know why new rules are appearing on their smartphones and how to live with them.

First and foremost, the administrators themselves need to be trained – fortunately, MDM solution providers typically offer such training. The costs usually amount to a few thousand zlotys per person. As for the rest of the employees, in our experience, companies organize internal training for them in-house.

How to calculate the ROI of an MDM implementation?

We have the costs and the potential benefits. To calculate the ROI of an MDM implementation, add them together and plug the numbers into the formula – let’s review it:

Importantly, the actual ROI can only be determined a year or sometimes even two years after implementation. By then, the company will have concrete data, for example, on how much administrators’ work time has been reduced or how many potential threats have been prevented. During the first year, we can only speak in terms of estimates. However, even these prove valuable, if only to demonstrate the potential of MDM implementation to management.

What is the ROI period for MDM?

Most companies break even on their MDM investment within 1.5 to 2 years. The larger the organization, the shorter the ROI period should be, as savings scale much faster than costs in this case – with a larger number of devices, typically only the price of software licenses increases.

What savings can implementing MDM bring to a larger company? – a practical example

Let’s assume that a certain company has 500 mobile devices. What might the bill for implementing and maintaining an MDM system look like in the first year?

• License: 96,000 PLN (for 16 PLN per device per month).
• Implementation, which includes, among other things, configuration of the new system, data migration, and integration of the platform with other company tools: 50,000–60,000 PLN (in an on-premise model, the costs of the entire infrastructure must also be added).
• Training for several administrators: PLN 15,000.

The total comes to approximately PLN 170,000. In subsequent years, implementation and training costs are eliminated, leaving only the license fee to pay, so software costs should drop to around PLN 100,000.

Now let’s look for savings.

• Let’s assume that an administrator would need to spend 200 hours manually configuring the entire mobile fleet. With MDM, most tasks can be automated, reducing the total work time to 15 hours. At a rate of 80 PLN/hour, the company will save 14,800 PLN in labor costs annually.
• Since MDM allows most device issues to be resolved remotely, the company can save as much as 10,000–15,000 PLN annually on ‘service trips’.
• The organization pays an average of 50 PLN per device per month for an internet package. Let’s assume that by controlling data usage, costs can be reduced by even 10% – on an annual basis, for 500 devices, this would mean savings of around 30,000 PLN.
• Let’s also assume that each of the 500 employees spends 2 fewer hours per year troubleshooting issues with their equipment. If the average hourly rate is 40 PLN, the costs of work downtime decrease by 40,000 PLN.
• Add to that all the lost smartphones and tablets that can be recovered through location tracking. If there are 10 of them and the average cost of purchasing new equipment is 3,000 PLN, the company will save another 30,000 PLN.

All of this adds up to just under 125,000 PLN. We haven’t even factored in the most important aspect – what the company can save on by preventing data breaches and other incidents involving mobile devices thanks to MDM.

If, thanks to the implementation of an MDM system, the company avoids even a single data breach over a few years, the investment will pay for itself with a large margin.

What other metrics besides ROI are worth tracking?

We mentioned that not all the benefits of implementing MDM can be directly monetized. Therefore, in addition to ROI, it’s worth monitoring other metrics to show whether streamlining business processes with the new system is actually yielding results.

What to track:

• the average time to deploy and configure a new mobile device,
• the number of hardware-related tickets submitted to the IT department and the time specialists spend handling them,
• the cost of mobile data plans,
• the number of lost and unrecovered devices,
• the number of detected security breaches.

If, even just a few months after implementing MDM, you see changes in these metrics compared to the period before implementation, that means we’re seeing results!

FAQ about ROI from MDM

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