In almost any business, growth is the goal—yet enterprise organizations, as they achieve their growth objectives, can encounter challenges that erode efficiencies and actually get in the way of growth and productivity over the long term.
Along with cultural and administrative growing pains, it’s not uncommon for IT departments to max out their bandwidth and struggle to manage expanding mobile workforces. Enterprise growth means more (and more advanced) devices, more demanding mobile apps, more network connections…and increasingly sophisticated security threats.
The constant scramble to keep up can negatively impact IT teams’ day-to-day experience—not to mention the employee experiences of all those workers they’re trying to serve. It can also create serious strain in the relationship between Operations and IT.
That’s in part because in order to enable excellent customer experiences throughout the organization, Operations needs devices to be easily tracked and traced. And if IT lacks the robust capacity needed to implement effective enterprise mobility management (EMM), lots of people can end up feeling frustrated.
Frustration is one problem; cost is another. Like ignoring a small leak that eventually bursts the pipes and floods a building, ineffectively managed mobility can give small issues room and time to spiral into major security breaches, lost data, and damaged business operations.
Without the right mobile workforce management solution and effective mobility management businesses can lose money and productivity due to:
These problems tend to hit hardest during periods of intense business growth. More and different types of devices, workers, and tasks overwhelm limited IT resources. Operations suffers on the front lines—and IT feels the pressure.
What does it look like for device users? Let’s say a retail company expands by opening five new storefronts. Supporting all those new point-of-sale systems, inventory scanners, and other devices stretches IT thin. A single device issue is multiplied by the number of devices, and complicated further by multiple geographic locations, each with its own team of employees working over multiple shifts.
Even a “smaller” operation in a single location can struggle. A small IT team managing a wide range of devices—mobile computers, wearables, IoT-connected devices, and other hardware—can be a recipe for bottlenecks, fatigue, and frustration on the IT side.
Operations can experience the struggle as a failure to deliver and maintain the functional tools employees need to deliver excellent customer experiences. Individual employees (and customers) experience high levels of dissatisfaction.
By outsourcing EMM to a team of experts, organizations can get customized management and control over their mobile devices—based on their unique enterprise needs, not simply what’s trending in the field. An expert partner connects and really listens to customers first, to field their device management needs and take stock of the pain they’re working with.
Managed mobility isn’t a one-size-fits all solution, so it’s smart to partner with a proven team—one with multiple OEM partnerships to ensure your devices are the best possible match, and that can handle every step in an implementation and management process, from initial project development to ongoing user support.
Identifying the right partners for hardware, software applications, and support solutions is key to building the control needed over user access, corporate data security, and connectivity. An integrations expert like Barcoding-Canada has those partnerships in place, so our teams can quickly dig in and offer solutions.
Does it mean there’s an immediate fix for every issue? Not always. But a worthy partner is upfront about the issues at hand, and communicates realistically about the depth of your issues, the extent of the solution you need, and the projected timelines and costs involved—and they’ll do their best to fast-track your project because they understand the reach and business impacts of ongoing device issues. EMM improves control over:
Customized mobility management delivers instant benefits to both IT and Operations, including:
Some IT departments may fear they’re giving up control by outsourcing EMM. But a trusted partner should deliver the opposite. Your EMM solution will enhance visibility and security for data-driven decisions. And offloading day-to-day management is a relief—not a risk.
The right EMM solution lets IT focus on higher-value initiatives that grow the business. It gives Operations the support needed to deliver standout customer experiences. And it provides comprehensive device management without added headcount.
We know from experience that if IT doesn’t have to do everything, they can do just about anything. And that’s what outsourcing EMM is all about. It can deliver real-time visibility, better data, and the support your teams need without depleting your own. We also know that when the right EMM solution is implemented, the results are nearly instantaneous: relief to IT, better security, increased visibility, and access to high-quality data to drive business decisions.
Before you start your enterprise mobility implementation journey, download our free guide. It walks you through the basics and illustrates what’s involved in each of the steps, from identifying your program goals to ongoing monitoring.
