Supply chain companies are missing out on the full benefits of mobility solutions, according to a new survey.
The VDC Research survey conducted by mobile and IoT device management solutions provider SOTI found that 36 per cent of respondents cited workforce productivity as the leading driver of mobility investments, followed by increasing revenue (29 per cent), improving real-time decision making (27 per cent), and differentiating competitively (26 per cent).
However, only one in five respondents claimed to have complete visibility into their mobility solutions, said Michael Dyson, managing director Australia and New Zealand, SOTI.
“Supply chain businesses understand that investing in mobile technology is the way forward for the industry, but many businesses are failing to fully leverage the many advantages of mobility.
“Equipping workers with mobile devices and access to critical enterprise content, applications, and real-time remote support streamlines operations, boosts productivity, and improves customer satisfaction,” he said.
The survey found that network/connectivity issues (49 per cent), application performance (41 per cent), and battery life (37 per cent) were the top three leading causes of mobile failure contributing to workflow disruption. According to Dyson, each indicence of failure costs workers more than 100 minutes of productivity, which ripples out to others who depend on the outcome.
“Because mobility for transportation and logistics companies is business-critical, they cannot afford this loss in productivity. This is why it is crucial that they have the right Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution in place.
“Given the critical nature of mobile solutions for many organisations today, providing support staff with real-time visibility into the performance characteristics of these solutions, and the tools to expeditiously address problems, substantially reduces the disruption caused by poorly performing solutions,” said Dyson.
Dyson recommends the use of EMM solutions to reduce the overhead support required for business-critical mobility systems, and says they boost key performance indicators such as the ability to remotely diagnose and fix issues, reduction of no fault found, and time required to fix problems.
“The key to minimising the impact of failure of business-critical mobile solutions is the visibility and ability to remotely manage mobile solutions which companies like SOTI provide,” he said. “If businesses want to make the most of mobile technology within the transportation and logistics industry, they need to ensure their mobility investments include an integrated mobility management platform as well.”
