Mobility Delivers Flexibility, Durability to Field

By Doug Carter

Business and services don’t happen within the confines of a traditional 9-to-5 home office anymore, so why should your technology?

Some mobility applications are easy to recognize, such as police departments and other emergency responders looking to access safety information and relay time-sensitive event information. Those mobile connections directly support smart decisions that save lives.

All mobility applications might not have that element of human drama, but those are increasingly becoming lifelines for growing businesses and organizations in the modern economy. Across virtually every customer segment today, we’re fielding requests to deploy mobile solutions, such as utility and telecommunications field crews having constant access while on the road. Retailers want tablets that allow them to meet customers out on the sales floor, not just at the stationary cash register. Physicians want portable tools that allow them to bring real-time access to medical data into patient exam rooms, while still meeting increasingly more stringent privacy requirements.

To make all that happen, CTG first works to understand precisely what our clients want to accomplish beyond conventional office walls. With that information, we can develop a comprehensive approach that delivers what our clients need – and sets a foundation that allows them to continue to seize the opportunities of mobile as it evolves virtually daily.

Personally, I came to CTG to support this segment with more than 20 years of law enforcement and investigative experience in strategy planning and execution within the public sector and enterprise markets. Does anyone remember doing things the first ways that we went mobile, which required lugging cumbersome laptops, looking for telephone landlines to connect by modem and crossing your fingers that it would work? We’ve come a long way with powerful (and streamlined) new options – but we still advise our clients to think critically on the best ways to implement mobile solutions, starting first and foremost with protocols that safeguard their information.

At the same time, remember that devices are not mobile, people are. With the extreme work challenges and environmental conditions that our customers face, they want to know their products are going to work every time. Not most or part of the time, but every time. Simplicity to the end user and quality assurance that data collection and communication is going to be there when it counts. In the field, time is everything and communication is key to making critical decisions that could save someone's life. That is why we have secured great partner relationships that we and our customers know can be trusted.   

Over the coming months, we’ll talk more about our different partners and how we deploy their products and services in the field for our customers. For now, let’s talk about the initial questions we ask of clients pursuing mobile solutions, including the initial investment in rugged vs. non-rugged (commercial grade) technology.

• Rugged products are designed to take a lot of abuse. These devices are resistant to heat, cold, vibration, water (spills/rain), fog/salt, dust and accidental drops. Trust me, all of that can happen on the road – sometimes at the very same time. Initial products were developed on the roughest military front lines, so you know they were built to be dependable.
• The more you handle mobile devices, the more rugged they should be. Think about the end game. Will your employees be constantly moving devices in and out of commercial trucks? Then I would certainly recommend rugged computers, as commercial or consumer grades will not hold up. Our rugged partners back up their belief in their products’ durability over time with competitive warranties.
• Think about if you really need a keyboard. A rugged device could be a tablet or a computer. Before you make the investment, consider what you expect your crews to do from the field – now and a couple of years down the road. If you decide a keyboard is important for occasional reporting, you could augment a tablet with a non-rugged Bluetooth keyboard.
• Windows or Android? Again, consider how your mobile technology will interact with what you are using back at headquarters.
• Assess how mobile devices will connect outside of WiFi. Understand who your carriers are in your service area, so you invest in the right internal air cards.
• Make it easy for your people to do their work. The mobile products we recommend feature Quadra Clear Screens, which means your people are able to view information even in direct sunlight. These feature amazing clarity.
• Determine whether your field crews need a camera. Tablets today come with great cameras, providing for an all-in-one solution that eliminates stand-alone cameras, photo cards and cumbersome cords.

Investing in rugged technology is, rightly so, a significant investment. But these products and solutions are designed specifically for operations on the go, offering the right approaches to make mobility a competitive advantage – whether in streamlining information access for emergency responders to save lives 0r helping you find better ways to meet your customers where they are.

Based in our North Carolina office, Doug Carter is the mobility account manager at Convergent Technologies Group.