The new era of technology is here, and it means worker efficiency is through the roof. This applies even to work that doesn’t seem like it needs technology, too! Where paper forms and receipts were king, now businesses can manage it all digitally. Invoicing? An employee with an iPad can manage it, and it no longer takes an entire accounting department to coordinate labor and hardware on a project, print it, verify it, and send it out. This alone makes a mobile system a great investment for businesses.
But how do you set one up effectively? Is there a brand you should use? And how do you get employees to actually use it? All this and more, below!
Picking a Product
Field tablets are a common sight today, not only because of the aforementioned invoicing ability! Tablets make viewing work documents more compact, and they’re tougher to lose than ever with an assortment of anti-theft and geolocation services on board. Companies can also set up tablets with storefront apps for vendors, their CRM of choice, and other work-related apps all designed to make the employee as efficient as possible, without requiring much extra training.
Picking a quality product here is important. You probably want something that’s scratch and ding resistant, and won’t shatter if your field techs drop it, but simultaneously you cannot break the bank by ordering the newest, shiniest consumer-side product on the market. Good news! Tablet manufacturers have a wide array of products, so you don’t have to choose between ‘Industrial Databank with 500 GB of Storage’ and ‘Hello Kitty My First Tablet’.
Procuring devices with major vendors can be a little tedious, but it shouldn’t be downright difficult – Apple as a business vendor is still hyper focused on your experience as the customer, and can walk you through your purchase. Even if you don’t want to do that, there are plenty of guides on what to look for, if other manufacturers catch your eye. And, while Apple is considered a premium brand, there are actually tons of affordable options depending on the size you’re looking at getting. A standard letter-sized iPad is competitive with generics and can actually beat out Microsoft in some cases!
Android devices are a little tougher, and take a little more shopping: what we call “Android” devices are actually a very wide array of products! Some of them are open-source, some of them are very crash-resistant but unintuitive, et cetera. To get the best Android product for your business is going to depend on your research into the products you’re looking at.
And don’t forget – you’re going to need a way to manage these things, too!
How do you do it correctly, and in such a way that you retain all the control over your investment?
Business Management
What you need to manage your tablets remotely is what’s known as an MDM (or Mobile Device Management) program. The one you get will determine what abilities you have to remotely control and update devices, but generally speaking, they’re capable of erasing, locking, and remotely updating devices so long as said device is connected to WiFi and powered on. You could, in theory, simply use the consumer-side protections, but since those are designed with maybe two or three devices in mind (a Mac at home, a phone and/or tablet for the road, for example) it’s going to be a major headache to try and manage 10 or 20 devices that way, if you can even do all the things you’ll need to do that way.
Not having an MDM is a real problem when it comes to software management, for example: MDMs allow you granular control of what apps employees are able to download, and can give you the status of a given device. If GPS is enabled, an MDM gives you a nice, clean place to look at this information – if you’re going off of “Find My Device”, a consumer-level program, you’re going to spend a long time trying to figure out which serial number is the one you actually need to report missing, should that ever happen. MDMs also allow you to lock a device without erasing it, something the consumer-level anti-theft protection doesn’t do to protect your data.
Next, ensure your MDM of choice is compatible with your tablet of choice! If you spot a really good tablet or MDM, it may affect which product you decide to use with that. And depending on the brand of tablet you intend to purchase, there might be extra layers of management you need to sort out first. Apple, for instance, has a couple of MDMs on the market, but Apple devices also want the Apple Business Manager overseeing things, so you’ll need both the MDM and the Manager.
Despite Apple’s best efforts, getting a proper Business Management system in place for your business’s iPads can be quite the hassle. It may require a visit to a physical Apple store, which can be very inconvenient if you’re not in a major city, and will ask you to have some documentation prepared, like your business’s license. Adding new tablets to the system may then require adding the tablet to both the Manager and the MDM, depending on which MDM you’re using and whether it’s capable of syncing in new devices.
Removing devices from an MDM is usually pretty easy, but again, since Apple has this extra layer, it can be slightly more cumbersome to offboard a device once it’s reached the end of its lifespan.
Picking on Reliability
As mentioned before, Apple devices can be competitive with generic or no-name brand tablets, and since it’s a relatively mainstream OS, there is little risk of Apple itself delivering adware to your tablets. That said, Apple is not completely free of problems, and a no-name OS might cooperate a little better if you’re trying to make custom apps happen for your employees.
Is Apple less prone to viruses? A little, but it’s not totally immune like some Apple fans believe. The OS is less common than Microsoft in business scenarios (some may say for a good reason) and as a result, fewer people are writing viruses for it. Fewer, not zero!
However, the good news is that a properly managed Apple device will not have many opportunities to download concerning programs. Even the games on the app store that were revealed to have malware hidden inside them are not necessarily a threat to a business device because a business device will ideally have controls in place to limit the apps available on them to the few your business needs.
Another common question businesses face when trying to add tablets is ease-of-use. Is it any easier to use Apple than to use a Microsoft tablet or an Android? Will your employees feel hopelessly lost on one, and at home in another?
This is an important question, but the truth is that you probably won’t be able to buy instant competence here. Business systems are different from home ones, and your employees are likely familiar with the apps you want to use anyway, so that’s out of the equation too. Generally speaking – your employees will have the easiest time with the system you provide training for. It can be a convenient side bonus if you discover your workforce is already pretty good with Apple devices, but you should provide training no matter what! Not only to the employees who use Android in this example, either: working on a managed device with business apps is very different from working on an unrestricted personal device using personal apps. A quality training program with reasonable expectations can boost efficiency and save your employees from fumbling with a tablet while trying to answer a call on it.
Setting reasonable expectations for the device, setting rules for security policies that the employees will have control over (no sticky notes with passwords hidden in the type cover, for example) and then updating them when a policy changes or when a new app is added to the stack will all make a transition away from paper and to the employee with their new tablets easier.
On the Other Hand
If this sounds daunting, it’s because it might be – this is a lot. Today’s era of business relies on its owners being competent in tech no matter what their business provides! To even get to the problems of remote inventory systems and invoicing, you’ve first got to deal with getting the tablets and getting them added to an MDM. To even do that, you must understand what function the tablets provide and plan out how this is going to make your life easier rather than harder.
The good news is that we’re an MSP (a Managed Service Provider) and we can help you get set up, and possibly provide some guidance on where to get started, if you need it! Managing your MDM is also a service we provide, allowing you to get back to doing the things you need to do to keep your business running smoothly.
Get in touch with us here: https://elixistechnology.com/contact/
