Mobilizing Your Workforce – Eight Key Questions

When mobilizing your workforce, device selection should rank lower on the list of priorities than you might think. It’s tempting to start with the device because ultimately the success of your mobilization project may hinge on how well you match your employees with the right equipment. But before you begin evaluating the latest gadgets you must first understand the varying requirements of your different employee groups and your long-term enterprise mobility goals. Proper planning is the key to your mobilization success. It needn’t delay your rollout. In fact, it should save you from making expensive and aggravating missteps.

As a starting point, you should consider the following eight questions.

Question #1: Who are your user groups?
Mobile workers’ needs can vary dramatically from one organization or division to another, so breaking your organization’s mobile workforce into logical groups is a good first step. You can then tailor device selections according to the needs of each group while balancing IT infrastructure. Once you have established logical groupings, you can more easily profile the needs of each group. A key part of the profiling focuses on the group’s environment and how a mobile solution can improve group productivity and help solve the group’s problems.

Question #2: What geographic areas do your user groups cover?
While the word mobility often suggests a wide range of locations, mobile workers tend not to roam across vast areas. Typically, most mobile activity is conducted in a well-defined region within a one-hour drive from the office.

However, geographic factors do affect the connectivity method. Systems such as cellular provide wide area coverage, but data coverage is not always available outside major urban markets. Users who simply need to be mobile within a campus-style area often select Wi-Fi connections.

Question #3: In what type of environments will your workers use the wireless devices?
Local environments in which the workers use the mobile tools are very diverse. Harsh environments that range from manufacturing sites to warehouses require ruggedized or hardened devices. Workers in enclosed or underground locations where they cannot make data connections must often store data offline. Offline storage increases the device’s required storage capacity. Walking or driving affects both the connectivity and the form of the device.

Question #4: How secure do your communications need to be?
Different organizations require different levels of security. Organizations that require a high level of security will find that higher end processors such as those provided in Windows Mobile compliant devices may be better equipped for the job than lower-end phone-based devices. If adherence to such standards as federal security standard FIPS 140-2 is important, lower-end phone-based devices are not practical. They will not support this level of security.

Question #5: What mobile applications would you like to have in the field?
Many wireless applications are available. Some of them require devices with specific technologies, such as GPS or cellular location-based services that support directions, routing and other location-based information.

Support for newer data collection technologies such as RFID and more mature technologies such as barcode reading also have an impact on device selection. When you need such applications, you should carefully assess the device functionality. When you add too many external features to a device that started out small and light, it quickly becomes heavy and unwieldy.

Question #6: What type of data are you accessing and entering?
Data access dictates screen size considerations. The more complex the data, the larger the screen size needed. For instance, a tablet is the most appropriate device for a physician reviewing X-rays and using a telemedicine application.

Your users’ data entry requirements determine whether you need an external keyboard, pen-based or keypad input. You must also remember that users more readily adopt applications if the user interface is familiar and easy-to-use.

Question #7: Do you need to access and react to data in real time?
Many mobile applications today do not support true real-time data delivery. Instead, they simply synchronize data with back-office systems at the end of the day. While this method may be fine for some applications, it is not ideal for others.

Question #8: What are your long-term mobile goals?
Long-term goals will have a significant impact on your device selection process. You may be starting out with a small project targeted at just some of your employees. For this project, you need to provision a single application to a single type of device – a point solution. But if you anticipate that your mobile needs will expand in the future, you should take a platform approach and adopt a more flexible and scalable architecture.

Why would this have an impact on your device selection? In point solutions, many device selection decisions are made for you. Point solutions often work on a limited choice of devices, based on criteria that the solution provider, rather than your organization, determines. With a platform approach, you have flexibility to change devices as your needs change or as technological advances bring new and useful devices to market. Put simply, an organization’s long-term benefits are dramatically higher with the integrated mobile platform approach.