Top 5 Mobile Performance Management Tips to Keep Field Workers Productive

Dan Pagel-NetMotion.jpg

NetMotion Software manages, accelerates, optimizes, and secures all traffic to mobile devices across any network, application or operating system, increasing operational efficiency and end-user productivity. 

What happens to applications when there are issues with connectivity or the network becomes unreliable? When it comes to being efficient on-the-job, it’s mobile performance management that is critical for the success of any field worker. This means giving workers the ability to perform and finish every task on time. At NetMotion, we specialize in keeping field workers connected. Here are our top five tips to do just that.

1.       Optimize traffic

Industry-specific apps, are key to maximizing productivity in the field. However, everything from workload, network conditions, server capacity and employee location to device age and performance can cause them to become unstable and potentially crash.  Enable workers to roam seamlessly across networks without having to worry about losing app connectivity.  Compress data and shape traffic to ensure that the information gathered in the field isn’t lost.

2.       Control applications

Keep the business critical apps up and running during the work day, while giving workers freedom on their devices after business hours, on Wi-Fi.  Restricting personal app usage to Wi-Fi only and during non-business hours keeps workers focused and the network available.  Blocking heavy bandwidth apps can help optimize data flow when signal strength is weak.  Prevent data overages with compression, data optimization and proactive alerting.

3.       Performance Analytics

Make sure to have access to robust data that offers a true picture of how workers, devices and applications are using bandwidth. This allows IT to make smarter decisions to tune and enhance the user experience and productivity.  Get access to network and app usage reports, inventory analysis, coverage maps and device maps to understand what mobile workers are experiencing.  Workers that are on-the-move throughout the workday rely on GPS location data for more-efficient scheduling, route-planning and controlling fuel consumption.  This is only possible if there is reporting confirming the GPS capability is working.

4.       Simplify security to keep data safe

Mobile security doesn’t have to be a nightmare. IT administrators should create a highly flexible and programmable secure mobile strategy. A secure tunnel protects the data sent between a device and enterprise resources, protecting applications running over public networks regardless of location. The secure tunnel should exercise strong authentication and encryption to ensure that data communications are protected on insecure public networks. Administrators should be able to configure options from the per-app level to device-wide, ensuring customizable and secure access to enterprise data. Most important, IT should tightly restrict access without making security burdensome for mobile workers.

 5.       Root cause connection issues

When connectivity issues occur in the field, it is often hard to tell what is causing the problem.  Business workers aren’t IT experts. While they’re in the field, connection issues and performance problems are notoriously difficult to diagnose. Consider using remote diagnostics to gather complete troubleshooting information. This is critical to allow IT to identify the root cause of the problem quickly, without relying on workers to run tests and answer questions.  IT needs the power to resolve problems quickly to put the workers back on the job.

For additional information, please be sure to visit http://www.netmotionsoftware.com/