For the TechOps team at Octopus Energy, a global leader in renewable energy and technology with over 5,000 employees, a manual onboarding process wasn’t an occasional inconvenience. It was a critical business bottleneck. With a field force of thousands relying on devices daily, their manual system for managing a fleet of over 4,000 devices had scaled into a massive operational vulnerability.
They weren’t just losing a full day to set up a small group of phones; they were operating with a glaring security blind spot and zero visibility over their critical device fleet. This is the story of how they moved forward by making a strategic choice: to adopt a specialist tool that gave them true, native control.
The cost of an unmanaged fleet
Before partnering with Applivery, the situation at Octopus Energy was a cascade of operational risks familiar to many fast-growing companies. The core problem stemmed from a fleet of over 4,000 unmanaged Android devices, leading to three critical issues:
The onboarding grind: the process was painfully manual, requiring a team to be locked in a room for nearly an entire day just to get a small group of new hires set up.
A critical security gap: with no device management platform (MDM) for their 4,000+ Android devices, the team had no way to remotely lock or wipe a device if an employee left the company. This left sensitive company and customer data completely exposed.
Zero visibility: the team was flying blind. They couldn’t track the health, status, or user assignment for their devices, making proactive management impossible.
Faced with this untenable situation, the easy path would have been to extend one of their existing management tools—used for Mac, iOS, and Windows—to the Android fleet. However, the TechOps team astutely identified this as a compromise. They knew a generic, multi-platform MDM would force them into a “minimum that every platform supports” experience, sacrificing the deep, native control they required for their critical field devices.
Instead of accepting a lesser solution, they chose to seek a true Android specialist like Applivery.
Finding a partner, not just a provider
Octopus Energy’s search wasn’t just for a tool; it was for a solution that matched their “best tool for the platform” philosophy. They chose Applivery for its deep focus on the native Android Management API, but the decision was solidified by a partnership approach.
A critical requirement for managing thousands of users was automating user provisioning via Okta (SCIM support). It was a feature they needed to operate at scale.
“Support for SCIM with Okta was a key requirement for us. Applivery delivered that within a few months.“
Alex Jones
TechOps Architect at Octopus Energy
This wasn’t just a verbal promise. The Applivery team contractually committed to developing and implementing this crucial feature in just a few months—a level of responsiveness and partnership that sealed the deal.
The transformative results of automation
Implementing Applivery delivered an immediate and transformative impact, turning device management from a reactive burden into a proactive, strategic capability.
The team described the change as being like “night and day.”
Onboarding time slashed from a full day to minutes: what once took a full day of painful, manual effort is now a smooth, automated Zero-Touch enrollment process. Devices are shipped directly to employees, who simply power them on to be ready for work.
Security gaps closed: the team finally gained full visibility and the critical ability to remotely lock or erase any of their 4,000+ devices, ensuring sensitive data is fully protected during employee offboarding.
IT workload reduced: by automating tasks like app permissions, entire categories of support tickets have simply vanished. This has freed the TechOps team from firefighting common issues, allowing them to focus on higher-value work.
“From our perspective, we have definitely seen a reduction in support requests… We used to have quite a few issues with one of our authentication apps… and now because all of that’s managed by Applivery and automatically enabled, we’ve just cut those issues out entirely.“
Alex Jones
TechOps Architect at Octopus Energy
The takeaway: specialist tools drive transformation
The story of Octopus Energy is a powerful example of how choosing the right, specialized tool can do more than just solve a problem—it can fundamentally transform an entire operational workflow. They didn’t just find an MDM; they found a strategic partner that enabled them to reclaim time, eliminate risk, and scale their operations with confidence.
See firsthand how Applivery can eliminate your onboarding bottlenecks, secure your device fleet, and reduce your IT workload. Schedule a personalized demo with one of our specialists today, and we’ll walk you through a solution tailored to your specific needs.
