Solving the Scale Problem in Mobile Device Collection

As investigations grow in scale and urgency, companies face a familiar bottleneck: mobile device collection. ModeOne’s remote-first, targeted model offers a smarter path forward.

When litigation hits, companies need to move quickly to secure relevant data. But in 2025, that data doesn’t just sit on email servers or laptops—it lives on smartphones. And mobile device data collection at scale is no longer a fringe problem. It’s becoming the norm.

Large organizations, especially those in regulated industries, increasingly face requests that involve dozens—or even hundreds—of custodians. That presents an immediate logistical and operational challenge. How do you collect from 100, 200, or 300 smartphones, often across multiple geographies, and do it in days, not months?

This is where traditional methods begin to crack.

Why Scale Breaks Legacy Tools

Most internal legal and IT teams are set up to handle the old normal: a handful of custodians, a few devices, a straightforward timeline. The new normal is a legal hold, requiring data from hundreds of employees’ smartphones, which many companies are not equipped to handle.

Some platforms offer remote options, but they often rely on full-device imaging and single-threaded workflows. Realistically, teams may be able to collect from two to three devices per day, per license. That caps out at 20 or 30 smartphones in a typical two-week window. It’s a timeline that is not realistic for most companies, which would not have the bandwidth to handle this. For high-volume, high-stakes matters, it isn’t enough.

Rethinking Mobile Device Collections for Today’s Needs

Remote-first platforms like ModeOne are helping corporate teams rethink what’s possible. Built for speed, scale, and precision, ModeOne’s approach allows dozens of mobile collections to run at once—without shipping smartphones or requiring custodians to initiate their own processes.

In one recent matter, a financial institution needed to collect data from over 300 smartphones in just ten business days. By using ModeOne’s platform, the client completed all 325 collections in approximately 80 hours. That’s an average of one smartphone every 15 minutes, made possible not by cutting corners, but by launching multiple targeted collections simultaneously.

Importantly, these collections weren’t initiated by the employees themselves. Each one began with an examiner who followed defined legal parameters, ensured defensibility, and kept the process on track. That kind of workflow is critical for accuracy, authentication, and legal validity.

What Targeted and Remote Really Mean

At scale, speed matters—but so does restraint. ModeOne enables targeted collections, pulling only the work-related data defined by legal scope. That might mean messages between specific individuals, work calendar entries, or corporate communication apps.

Equally important is what isn’t collected: personal texts, photos, health data, or other sensitive information that’s irrelevant to the matter at hand. In a landscape shaped by privacy regulations and growing employee concerns, this precision is a feature—not a compromise.

And because the entire process happens remotely, companies don’t need to ship devices, fly out experts, or build forensic teams in every office around the world. Whether employees are in a central HQ or spread across countries and time zones, the ModeOne SaaS Framework can reach them without adding operational burden.

Preparing for the Next Wave

Mobile devices aren’t going away, and neither is the pressure to collect from them. With regulatory agencies like the SEC, DOJ, and FTC emphasizing mobile communication compliance, corporate teams must be ready to act quickly and responsibly when an issue arises.

That readiness can’t depend on outdated tools that struggle to meet high-volume demands. Companies need systems that work at scale, adapt to remote work realities, and protect both privacy and legal integrity.

ModeOne’s model doesn’t just respond to this challenge—it anticipates it. And as the volume and complexity of corporate mobile collections grow, that’s becoming less of an advantage and more of a requirement.

Want to explore how ModeOne enables remote, targeted collections at scale? Get in touch with our team.