20 Dec

Mobile-First Approach: A Key Strategy in 2020

The emergence of the “now economy” is impacting every industry from e-commerce to logistics to manufacturing. The Internet of Things (IoT) is here and companies have to take advantage of the on-demand economy.. This year Cyber Monday raked in a new record of more than $9 billion in sales, marking the first day in history when consumers spent over $3 billion using their smartphones, the 2019 report from Adobe Analytics showed. With this significant jump in spending, it is more important than ever before to adopt a “mobile-first” mentality to business process improvement, especially within your sales and service organizations.

Our partners at Zebra compiled a list of critical steps you need to keep in mind when selecting and implementing mobile technology. These 5 steps are outlined below can be found in their white paper, Guiding Through the Mobility Maze.

5 Critical Steps to Consider

  • Applications & environment demands – Can your device survive the inevitable? In a line-of-business environment, you need something that won’t fail in the face of drops, spills, extreme temperatures, or dust and dirt.
  • Data capture requirements – How often will your device need to double as a scanner? Assess whether your application requires scanning only a few bar codes per day or if it’s more scan-intensive. Are speed and accuracy necessary to get the job done? Determine if you will need signature capture and credit card payment capabilities.
  • Power needs – Will your device be in continuous use all day or even over several shifts? Are your workers always on the move? Will they be unable to access a charging solution for long periods of time? Remember, power management goes beyond having a high-capacity battery that can last a single shift, or even being able to swap out a battery in the middle of a shift.
  • Training and ease of use – Will your workers effectively adopt their new device, or will your deployment be prone to workarounds and noncompliance? Be sure to consider how the device you choose will help or hinder your workers’ completion of everyday tasks.
  • Security requirements –  As we wrote in our blog, Setting the Cybersecurity Bar Higher, while security may have started with a narrow focus around credit cards or personal health information, it now has a much broader scope – any information about your customers and operations is now of value to those hackers. Securing a mobility deployment is a multi-faceted effort: from selection and configuration to enforcement and training.

Let Us Help

The SMS Group empowers companies of all sizes to achieve a performance edge with our wide range of data collection solutions. Contact us  to learn more.

*Source: Zebra White Paper 10 Steps to Finding the Right Mobile Device.

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