Deciding whether or not to buy smartphones for your employees doesn’t have to be a complicated decision. As prices for phones and their data plans fall and the costs of being offline or unavailable increase, it’s becoming easier and easier to see how a small investment in technology can benefit your business in the long run.

The primary benefit of smartphones over regular cell phones is that they let your staff access email and many web-based applications. As more and more urgent business gets done over email and the web, that’s a key advantage.

Balance costs and risks to decide who gets smartphones

Comparing risks and costs to avoid them is a good way to approach this decision. One of the most obvious risks to businesses that generate revenue online is server crashes. The instant your web site goes down, you’re losing money. That’s why IT employees at tech companies are often the first group to get smartphones. (Well … that, and the fact that the IT department often gets to make the technology purchasing decisions doesn’t hurt, either!)

Courtesy of Apple

And just because you don’t sell your products online directly, don’t think that this doesn’t apply to you. If your customer database or production web sites go down, losses could mount quickly. The costs to protect against these problems  – a few hundred dollars for a phone plus the price of a monthly plan – are tiny compared to the loss you’d suffer if your site was down for hours.

Opportunity cost is another important risk to consider. Do you have salespeople who travel regularly? Compare the profit from one major sale to the cost of a smartphone. Looks like an easy decision now, doesn’t it?

Keep in mind that when buying phones for a business, you may be able to save money in a few ways. If you’re buying enough phones – probably 50 or 100 – you can get steep discounts from the providers. You can also share minutes among the phones, so you don’t have to worry about individual usage patterns as long as you stay within your allotted minutes.

Set clear guidelines

Smartphones aren’t as glamorous as they were a few years ago – some people see them as tethers that make workers into slaves for their employers. But nonetheless, a new iPhone or Blackberry can be a fairly flashy perk, and if you don’t create clear guidelines as to who gets them, you may get some employees complaining.

Before you start buying the equipment, outline the types of job responsibilities that qualify someone for a company smartphone – and apply those rules fairly. You may also want to have rules based on your corporate hierarchy – all VPs get one, for example – but keep in mind that often it makes sense to start with lower-level employees in critical departments, while higher-ranked staff in departments with little need for constant email contact can wait.

Blackberry or iPhone?

Despite the surge in popularity of the iPhone among consumers, Blackberry devices are far more popular in corporate environments. The main reason for this is that Blackberries offer more security features designed for corporate IT departments. They include the ability to remotely wipe a Blackberry if it’s lost or stolen, limits on the types of applications that can be installed, and remote management of an entire set of phones. Right or wrong, some larger corporations simply require these sorts of security measures, and while iPhones are starting to add some of the features, they’re not designed with central management in mind.

Blackberries are also available on multiple cellular networks, while iPhones are available exclusively on AT&T until at least 2010 in the US. While they were little more than glorified pagers at first, Blackberries have also had longer to establish their advantage in corporate environments.

Of course, the iPhone has a big advantage in the number of applications available for it. That may not be a big selling point for companies that want employees using their equipment solely for work-related reasons, but there are thousands of excellent applications for business travelers, sales work, and other legitimate activities.

There are detailed comparisons of the iPhone and Blackberry models all over the web: Bold vs. 3G, Storm vs. 3G, Curve vs. 3G, multiple Blackberries vs. iPhone. You’ll find that there a lot of personal preferences and slight differences: many people prefer one over the other based on subjective feelings.

If you bring this question up in a crowded room, you may also find that people can develop strong feelings about their personal electronics, so tread carefully.