Enterprise Mobility Solutions Bring Workers and IT Together
B2M Solutions’ Fifth Annual State of Enterprise Mobility Report underlined that enterprise mobility solutions should be a priority for more organizations. The report revealed valuable data about the disparity between workers and IT departments when it comes to mobile device issues, IT’s poor visibility into device health, and how much problematic devices hurt productivity.
This disconnect — largely caused by inefficient or subpar enterprise mobility management — creates bigger costs and smaller revenues for businesses. Even worse, it hurts the customer experience so crucial to business success.
Frontline workers’ jobs depend on reliable rugged computers, laptops, and mobile devices. That means bridging their experience and IT staff visibility improves productivity and job satisfaction. Embracing enterprise mobility solutions proactively allows IT teams to fix issues before they become a major liability to the organization.
Workers and IT: A Disjointed Relationship
The biggest red flag sent up by B2M’s report was that the majority of workers (80%) experience problems with mobile devices or apps that affect their work at least once a month. More than half have device or app issues that hurt their productivity at least once a week — but according to IT leaders, only 10% of workers actually report those problems every month.
Those “unseen” and unreported problems (including WiFi/network problems, app stability, and rugged laptop battery performance) seriously impede workers’ ability to get their jobs done and introduce more errors into their work. That loss of productivity can be a big source of invisible costs to the parent organization and may create more negative customer experiences that drive sales down.
A Costly (Lack Of) Relationship
Those hidden costs aren’t insignificant and aren’t limited to monetary costs. Extra worker stress from dealing with device or app problems quickly deteriorates job satisfaction and can lead to higher employee turnover. Workers surveyed for the B2M report cited the inability to do their jobs effectively, damaged coworker relationships and poor customer experience as the biggest problems caused by technological issues.
The customer experience weighed most heavily on workers’ minds. At least once a month, 44% of them dealt with angry or rude customers due to delays related to mobile device problems.
Survey respondents from both the IT and worker sides said each device or app problem takes an average of 30 minutes to resolve. That 30 minutes, added up across all issues workers experience in a month, equals a major (and costly) hit to productivity.
One major added expense IT workers reported was replacing batteries in mobile devices. Unfortunately, IT departments often don’t have good visibility into device health because they don’t have enterprise mobility solutions with remote diagnostic tools to monitor them. Many of these IT workers (80% of them) said they proactively replace perfectly healthy batteries in rugged computers to avoid problems before they occur.
Enterprise Mobility Management Bridges The Gap
With all of these communication and visibility problems, how can an organization avoid racking up huge costs?
The answer is to fix those problems and facilitate better communication between teams. Tools already give IT real-time alerts for issues with routers, switches, LAN, and other equipment. But they don’t have that same level of visibility into mobile device health, so problems can become overwhelming before IT even knows they exist.
The IT leaders surveyed in the report specifically cited the following areas they need better visibility into:
- Device health
- Diagnostic tools to pinpoint the root cause of each issue
- Real-time visibility on device, mobile app and data usage
Unfortunately, most MDM/EMM tools don’t provide that level of visibility when it comes to mobile solutions. That’s where enterprise mobility solutions like Panasonic Connect’s ProServices and TOUGHBOOK Smart Essentials can help. Panasonic Connect gives enterprise-level organizations the actionable insights IT needs to keep mobile devices and rugged laptops running smoothly to maximize productivity. With event notifications, battery life tracking, network and data usage monitoring, and device behavior reports, IT can stay on top of mobile device health.
Thanks to that greater level of information and monitoring, IT can often head off problems before they affect workers, and help workers get the most out of their mobile tools. This creates better employee morale and job satisfaction while reducing those “invisible” costs to the business.
Want to get your workers and IT on the same page? Check out TOUGHBOOK Smart Essentials today.
