Early in my career, before iPhones and Androids existed, I was gaining valuable experience as a technical consultant building mobile solutions for the United States Postal Services (USPS) in Accenture’s Enterprise Mobility group. During this time, mobility was not sexy nor easy to implement at scale. I was excited to come to work every day because I was able to witness how mobility enhanced the employee experience and made a positive impact. I did not know it at the time, but those wins with data capture and replacing manual processes with a modern digital experience would shape my view on the importance of dedicated devices and enterprise employees. Learn about more about Enterprise Communication Tools here!
These early milestones in my career and the innovation around employees and dedicated devices serve as part of the foundation of BlueFletch.
We pride ourselves on delivering tools and technology end-users love to use. We’ve found that the more employees feel empowered, the more productive they become, leading to higher morale and retention. Having connected, empowered frontline workers also brings tremendous benefits to the overall customer experience.
Jeff Bezos said it best, “The only way to give great customer experience is with happy people.”
Dedicated Devices = Organizational Improvements
Here at BlueFletch, we are passionate about dedicated devices. If companies want to compete in a competitive digital information landscape, every employee needs to matter and have the right tools so they can be enthusiastic about doing their job.
Our homes, cars, refrigerators are all becoming smarter and so should our working environments. Below are some experiences from past projects that highlight how dedicated devices closed the gap with what employees needed vs. what leadership thought they had.
Simplified complex tasks and improved employee motivation
- An assembling company based in the Southeast had an incredibly high turnover rate, as a result of leaderships’ pressure on employee productivity and a complex work process.
- Employees were compensated based on their productivity and often felt frustrated due to the highly paper-based workflow, which limited them from succeeding. Not only that, manual processes frequently led to invoice discrepancies and lost revenue.
- With BlueFletch’s help, we were able to design technology that put their employees at the center of the experience.
- Digitizing the entire workflow process improved task efficiency, increased invoice accuracy, and closed the gap on accounts receivables.
- Most importantly, employees played a critical role in requirements, design, and user acceptance testing. With employee participation at the core of product development, engagement was through the roof and eased the changed management process.
Reduced overtime and increased productivity
- Warehouse employees working for a furniture company were drowning in overtime. They even said they’d rather be at home spending time with family or working on hobbies, rather than reaping the monetary gains from working overtime.
- These warehouse employees had to use multiple device types (e.g. rugged scanners, desktop computers, digital cameras) and four different IT systems just to carry out their daily tasks. This slowed them down tremendously.
- Leadership’s initial request was to only focus on replacing the rugged scanners, as they assumed the workers in the warehouse had more than enough to execute their daily tasks.
- Our team was able to guide our client through a cohesive technology strategy and leverage the power of modern Android rugged devices to provide a solution that transformed the warehouse in only a few months.
- The employees loved having a single device and a single application that enabled anyone to carry out a task in the warehouse. Productivity increased by 1.5 hours per employee, per day.
Enhanced collaboration and customer satisfaction
- For a transportation company, delays in travel were hurting their bottom line. Customers were frustrated with disjointed messaging during irregular operations due to weather or maintenance.
- Employees were hungry for the ability to communication easily and ask for help across the organization.
- With dedicated devices and role-based views, our team helped create a tailored experience designed around their employees’ schedules and enhanced collaboration across teams.
- The newly found productivity not only reduced delayed but increased the company’s net promoter score with its customers
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Below are three takeaways that organizations need to consider when supporting dedicated devices.
Support
When supporting dedicated devices, especially rugged Android devices in the field, visibility is essential.
- End-users should have tools for troubleshooting but also for reporting issues to the Help Desk.
- Help Desks should be able to remotely diagnose, pull logs, and triage without incurring the expense of sending devices in (reduce no fault found).
- Businesses should have visibility into who is using what, when, and where. That information should inform the entire organization on the health of devices, app usage or engagement, and allow data to reinforce innovation investments.
Manage
Managing a fleet of company-owned shared devices should be a seamless experience.
- It is important for companies to have a plan for properly staging and kitting devices.
- Leverage device capabilities and infrastructure to create a device that is site and location-aware.
- When devices arrive on-site, the unboxing experience should require little to no input from the end-user.
- The device and application installation, update, and management process should not impede the end-user at all. We built an OS Upgrade Tool to help make this experience as seamless as possible for dedicated devices.
Secure
Security is paramount when dealing with line of business applications. Having the right processes, procedures, and solutions in place are key to protecting IT systems and your mobile investment. Here are a few ways you can increase security for your dedicated devices:
- Lockdown devices and keep device settings secure if the device experience is to remain consistent for employees sharing devices.
- Provide role-based single sign-on access so that employees will only have access to the applications they need.
- Have tools in place for finding lost devices, or protecting business-critical data if a device is stolen.
Our Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) of products are tailored to create a best in class employee experience for rugged Android dedicated and shared devices.
We can help unlock the potential gains in the employee experience for your fleet of Android devices, all it takes it getting started.
