What’s cooking! Join me and my first Supply Chain Kitchen guest, SOTI Director of Enterprise Channel Sales Nadeem Jiwani, for a conversation covering some of today’s biggest supply chain challenges and emerging trends.
Together, we explore the complex and fast-changing supply chain and enterprise IT landscape, and dive into some of the innovative digital- and data-driven solutions that drive efficiency, accuracy, and productivity.
SOTI has long been a premier strategic partner of the technology integrator experts at Barcoding, Inc., and Nadeem has been part of that long-term relationship. SOTI’s industry-leading enterprise mobility and IoT solutions are helping Barcoding customers transform their businesses with real-time, data-driven insights.
Watch the video below for all the details. No time right now? You’ll want to come back for it later—but in the meantime, we’ve got highlights for you right here!
About SOTI
SOTI is a premier Barcoding partner and proven innovator and industry leader for simplifying mobility and ILT solutions by making them smarter, faster, and more reliable.
I welcome Nadeem to dive right into the good, bad, and ugly of the past few years’ toughest operational obstacles in supply chain:
The labor shortage isn’t going away anytime soon, and the associated wage increases are applying even more pressure on businesses to find and banish sources of waste and inefficiency in their processes and workflows. But that’s not enough. Companies need to find how to use technology and automation in ways that make work-life more satisfying—without intimidating workers.
It used to be thought that automation technologies were about eliminating workers; today, it’s all about empowering employees by siphoning off the mundane, menial, and error-prone tasks so people can focus more on the value they can bring to work every day.
Nadeem adds that current retirement trends have highly experienced employees departing, further increasing the need to implement technology and tools like automation to support knowledge transfer and ongoing productivity. For example, imagine a massive warehouse daily cycle count completed in just 15 minutes by a pair of drones. It’s not the future—it’s today and, as Nadeem describes it, it’s a natural shift.
Mature, tech-resistant industries had to make leaps just to stay in business in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to support a remote workforce, do more with far fewer workers in retail and warehousing, and move to ecommerce and omnichannel fulfillment, businesses of all kinds had to embrace new technologies fast. Those that did quickly discovered additional benefits that come along when business data is digitized.
Nadeem cites examples of a grocery chain’s hourly aisle inspections and customer care at an auto service department, two tasks commonly performed by employees with a pen and clipboard. Before digitization, there were boxes of paperwork—hard to keep track of, store, protect, review, and audit. Or, as an alternative, employees could enter the clipboard data manually—a great way to introduce human error.
But with a custom app, those inspections and reviews can be completed faster, accompanied by photo or video as needed, with digital signatures for management oversight and automated time and date stamps for regulatory compliance. SOTI Snap is a drag-and-drop, rapid app development tool that enables users to create business-critical apps in minutes, not months, without mobile app development’s typical time, cost, and coding requirements. (And without all the boxes of papers.)
Enterprise organizations use IoT-connected equipment (such as printers) everywhere, yet their IT operations are often centralized. It’s well known that IoT devices are often the path of least resistance for nefarious actors to access enterprise networks. Security concerns are big—but so is the potential downtime of equipment and devices like printers to deal with management, maintenance, and repairs.
Using SOTI Connect, businesses can address security needs, maintenance, remote support, and device asset management from their centralized IT location with visibility and ease. SOTI Connect is reducing device time offline—often by hours—to better support productivity across the enterprise.
A single business can deploy fleets of thousands of mobile devices, each with its own user profile and configuration needs. Making sure every user has the right device, configured correctly and working properly to support productivity can feel like a game of Whack-a-Mole. Device- and operating system-agnostic solutions like SOTI MobiControl enable automated lifecycle management of devices, from pushing profiles and configuring devices to remote troubleshooting.
For MobiControl users, the frustration of devices that are misplaced within facilities—not gone, but not found, either—is a thing of the past with new indoor locationing capabilities. It can also help protect information by applying geofencing to device apps and tools, like cameras or recording capabilities.
Mobile devices and applications work in complex environments, and sometimes factors outside the device are to blame. But digging in, recreating the issue, and troubleshooting solutions can take a full day or more of device productivity. A large device fleet only amplifies this kind of problem (and its costs).
SOTI XSight, the world’s first integrated diagnostic intelligence and support solution, delivers real-time visibility into device performance data. That’s enabling customers to identify and fix problems faster, to improve performance and make smarter, more effective business decisions regarding business-critical mobility strategies. (Spoiler alert: Watch the video to hear how one large enterprise saved 70% on replacing a fleet’s worth of batteries.)
It’s exciting to look ahead toward what’s becoming possible as businesses of all kinds reap the value of their enterprise data, and for companies moving forward, protecting that data starts with an enterprise mobility security strategy. Get a clearer understanding of what’s involved so you can start creating yours. Just click here or below for your free whitepaper from SOTI and Barcoding.
