Things change. Change is often a good thing, but when you have invested time, effort and money into implementing an Enterprise Mobility Solution, you need to know that it can cope with change.
What Could the Future Hold for Your Enterprise Mobility Solution?
Let’s take a look at some of the changes that your organisation could face in the future:
Organisational needs change: The job role and tasks performed by field service staff may alter over time. The services your customers require may also vary. A good Enterprise Mobility Solution needs to be able to adapt and perform any new functions required.
A great solution will allow you to easily make necessary changes yourself and will grow with your organisation. Being able to build new forms or update the formats of old ones will help maintain compliance and best practice. It’s much better if extra functionality can be added to your solution as you go along and as your needs change.
Preferred devices change: A couple of years ago, people wanted their solutions to run on Windows and BlackBerry. Now most people want solutions on Android and Apple platforms. A year from now… who knows? Solutions that work on tablets have swiftly become as important as those for PCs, smartphones and laptops. The type of device that seems most suitable to your users can change over time as technology advances. No one wants to be stuck using out-of-date devices because your chosen solution won’t work on anything else.
The answer to this issue is to select a solution that will work across multiple platforms and is continuously developed by the provider to ensure that the solution remains robust and in-line with industry standards. The great thing about a multi-platform solution is that it can be used across the whole organisation, no matter what device each department or a particular worker requires.
User Expectations Change: In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion around how consumerisation of mobile technology has impacted enterprises. Not only has this raised security issues and data protection, but it has also affected what users expect from mobile technology. For the majority of field service teams, they are used to interacting with slick, simple consumer apps on their personal mobile devices, and will therefore have little patience for clumsy enterprise systems.
This is why it is important that solution development is informed by consumer technology and designed with the end user in mind. User acceptance is key to successful implementation and can make or break an Enterprise Mobility Project.
With these potential challenges in mind it is important to think of a long term strategy when selecting or rethinking your field service management software, taking into consideration what could change and how your solution will respond.