Five signs your endpoint management strategy needs an upgrade

Five years ago, your endpoint management strategy matched your workplace perfectly. Employees worked from desktops and laptops. IT managed those devices through a single platform. Security are policies applied uniformly.

Then your workplace changed. Employees started working from anywhere. Conference rooms got smart displays. Retail locations added tablets and kiosks. Collaboration moved to digital platforms that your traditional tools don't see.

Your IT operations still perform well. Tickets get closed, endpoints stay compliant, and procurement runs on schedule. But capability applied to an outdated framework creates friction. Conference room displays that take ten minutes to connect. VPNs that need troubleshooting before every call. Manual provisioning for devices that should deploy automatically. These moments signal that your strategy and your workplace have grown in different directions.

When should you rethink your approach? Here are five signs.

1. Your IT team has the skills to innovate but spends their time troubleshooting.

Traditional endpoint management treats every device type as a separate project. One tool for laptops, another for mobile devices, a third for conference room displays. Your talented IT team coordinates systems instead of optimizing them.

Unified endpoint management centralizes this work. A unified platform handles provisioning, monitoring, and security across physical endpoints. Your team sets policies once and applies them everywhere. Instead of manually configuring devices, they analyze usage patterns. Instead of reacting to tickets, they prevent issues before employees encounter them. AI-driven analytics spot patterns in device performance and flag potential problems before they cause downtime.

The result: more strategic projects, faster responses to business needs, and work that moves your organization forward.

2. Digital endpoints power your work but stay invisible to traditional management.

How many distinct applications and platforms do your employees access daily? Your device inventory probably lists every laptop and smartphone, but the digital collaboration platforms, content players, and productivity apps that enable work rarely appear in traditional endpoint management systems.

Consider a typical hybrid employee's morning: email, video call, document editor, project management system, conference room presentation. That's five different digital endpoints before lunch. Each affects their ability to work and creates security requirements. Most are invisible to device-centric management tools.

This visibility gap complicates troubleshooting. When an employee can't access a collaboration tool, IT investigates device issues, network problems, application configuration, and access permissions across disconnected systems.

Endpoint management that covers both physical devices and digital platforms gives you visibility into application performance and helps you answer a simple question: Can everyone do their work today?

3. Your security standards are solid but coverage has unexpected gaps.

Encryption enabled, threat detection running, automatic updates configured. Your traditional laptops and desktops meet these standards.

But your environment includes smart displays running digital signage, tablets at retail locations, and collaboration room systems. These devices often sit outside standard management tools, getting provisioned during installation, then staying off the radar until an audit surfaces the gap.

Digital endpoints add another layer. Collaboration tools, content management systems, and productivity apps each have their own access controls and data handling practices. Without unified visibility, you're managing security through assumptions rather than evidence.

Complete endpoint management extends your security standards to every device and platform. The policies that protect data on a managed laptop apply equally to conference room systems and kiosks. Threat detection, ransomware prevention, and compliance monitoring work consistently across your environment. You move from hoping you're covered to knowing you are.

4. Employee experience varies by device type rather than job requirements.

Two employees in the same department have different technology experiences. The first uses a standard laptop with single sign-on, automatic issue resolution, and seamless overnight updates. The second rotates between a desktop, shared tablet, and conference room systems. Single sign-on works inconsistently. Fixes require IT visits. Updates need coordination.

This difference comes from endpoint management optimized for some devices while treating others as special cases. Employees adapt, working around limitations and avoiding certain devices or locations. They're productive, but they could be more productive.

Employee experience monitoring reveals where specific device types create friction, measures actual resolution times, and identifies which configurations improve productivity. This insight helps IT focus on improvements where they'll have the most impact. Whichever endpoint someone uses, they should be able to work without unnecessary obstacles.

5. Multiple management tools create administrative overhead.

Your IT team uses several systems to manage your complete endpoint environment: a primary platform for traditional computers, mobile device management, conference room equipment, maybe specialized software for kiosks or digital signage. Each has its own dashboard, reporting format, and support process.

This creates overhead. Your team learns multiple interfaces and coordinates updates across platforms that weren't designed to communicate. You can't easily see your complete endpoint landscape or track assets across their lifecycle. You're paying for overlapping capabilities while staff time goes toward coordination instead of improvement.

Centralized endpoint management means consistent visibility, control, and security policies while accommodating different endpoint types. Your team works in one platform. Your policies apply everywhere. You can track devices and software from deployment through retirement, optimizing usage and eliminating waste. Administrative overhead shrinks, giving your team capacity for higher-level work.

What this makes possible

These five signs point to an opportunity: endpoint management strategies can go beyond device control. Organizations making this shift see IT teams with capacity for strategic projects, security coverage without gaps, and employee experiences that support productivity regardless of device type.

This requires rethinking what endpoint management should accomplish. Enable productive work across all endpoints. Use insights to prevent problems rather than react to them. Manage physical and digital endpoints as one connected environment.

Your endpoint strategy should make work easier. When it doesn't, you have options beyond working around the limitations.

Unisys' unified endpoint management solutions provide centralized visibility, security, and employee experience monitoring for modern workplaces. Our approach combines AI-driven analytics for proactive optimization, expert field support for physical endpoints, and unified management across devices and digital platforms.

See how this could work in your environment. Learn more about our approach or connect with our experts to explore what's possible.