Achievetec



THE ACHIEVETEC CHECKLIST - THE SIX QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE MAKING A MOBILE DEPLOYMENTCONTENTS:Overview – Please read our helpful checklist if you are thinking of making a mobile deployment.Mobile ComputingQuestion 1. Which of your mission critical applications would be suited to portable devices, and do you need devices that will withstand large amounts of wear and tear?Question 2. Should you go for devices based on Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5, Windows 8 Pro, Windows Phone 8, Apple iOS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry or use Web OS?Question 3. Is yours a mobile project with a short life-span of a year or two - requiring short lived devices to match, or do you look to the long-term – both from IT management perspective and for a greater Return on Investment (ROI)?Question 4. Which platforms link seamlessly with your existing and planned IT infrastructure, and which devices will give you the best, most trouble-free, user experience?Question 5. What are the training and support ramifications and what level of service and support will you need?Question 6. What Enterprise Device will suit you best, Rugged or Consumer? Total Cost of OwnershipAnalysisTesting Standards & Protocols ExplainedRugged/Consumer Comparison TableThe Achievetec Checklist – Helpful points to consider before making a mobile deployment.Remember when buying mobile phones and handheld devices was easy?To retain your edge in today’s competitive business environment you need to embrace the rapid convergence that is now occurring between the fields of telecommunications and mobile computing. And one of the most important trends is the development and use of mobile versions of applications that have been confined, until now, to full blown computers.Today’s Mobile technology platforms are already transforming everything from what we expect from our smartphones and tablets to any number of heavy duty commercial, industrial and public sector applications, some with just one focused purpose in mind, and others capable of performing a multitude of business functions.Mobile ComputingToday’s hand-held smartphones, Enterprise Digital Assistants (EDA’s) and tablets (with sim) offer the power and sophistication of a full-blown computer that not only allow your people to work and communicate effectively in the field, but can also be used for almost any specialised business ruggedised application.In the past mobile phones made phone calls. Then text messages became big business. And for a long time that was about it. Buying consumer handsets and airtime then was straightforward. That was then. And this is now.The latest mobile devices: more powerful than the best laptops of a few years ago.Today, buying mobile phones and other handheld communication devices is an increasingly complex minefield. For one thing, technology is evolving more rapidly today than at any time in history.At a consumer level, the mobile phone, already the most prolific product the world has ever seen, is at the heart of a rapid convergence between mobile phones, landline phones, VOIP, cameras, computers, web browsing, SatNav devices, dictation machines, MP3 players, games consoles, radios, watches, clocks and credit card readers.At the consumer level, mobiles are expected to start replacing credit cards, supermarket loyalty cards/coupons and bus passes. But they will soon play an even larger part in our lives, according to a report released by Juniper Research which predicted mobiles will replace traditional paper tickets for everything from cinemas to air travel. The study also said airlines and bus and train operators are developing a range of new mobile tickets that will work via text messages, bar codes or downloadable applications. Indeed since the report was released bus operators like Wilts & Dorset Bus Company now have a smartphone ticket app. See BBC report: Now that’s all very well if you only need to buy a new one for yourself as a consumer and are happy to spend hours playing with it, finding out how it all works so you impress your friends. If, on the other hand, you need professional devices for your mobile fleet that will integrate securely with your IT infrastructure; devices that will do the job reliably day in, day out, with the least amount of unnecessary frills, but enough to keep your users happy and actually give you a real return on your investment: then it can be far more complex.What does this mean for your business?The same sort of convergence is also occurring at a commercial, industrial and enterprise level, with such things as the proliferation of location-based services, GPS, workforce globalisation, inventory control, RFID, mobilising your desktop applications, Software as a Service (SaaS) mobile applications, signature capture, terminals and many other apps specially written for rugged portable devices.With all these factors to consider, more changes are occurring in the mobile phone and portable device space than all but the most informed experts can keep up with. So when you’re thinking about changing, updating or adding to your phone or handheld fleet there are a multitude of crossovers and future implications to consider.Technology by its nature is transient, but we can guide you to an enduring solutionDevelopments are seemingly continual, but one thing never changes – and that is the outcome you want to achieve. What do you need to accomplish for your business with your investment?Whether it’s as little as five, or as many as hundreds or thousands of devices, there are certain questions you should clarify to ensure a maximum return on investment. Careful consideration of what smartphone, EDA, tablet or laptop will be best suited for your project (along with personal motivations) will save you from avoidable headaches down the road. Cost is nearly always a major factor for most businesses. You deserve value for money for your hard earned cash. The right choice (although not necessarily the cheapest) will ensure the success of your endeavour. Long term, the cheapest device is universally proven to be a false economy.Finding the right balance between evaluating a device and the time it takes to test in your organisation is also critical. If it takes an organisation nine to twelve months to test and integrate a device, then by the time a roll-out is started, the chosen consumer device could be obsolete. If the evaluation process takes too long, you could then find that getting hold of batteries and accessories for an obsolete device is a huge challenge. With over 25 years’ experience in the industry, we have come across many pitfalls that businesses have fallen prey to, so you don’t have to!If you ask, and (we’ll help you answer) these 7 questions carefully, then you shouldn’t go awry!Question 1: Which of your mission critical applications would be suited to portable devices, and do you need devices that will withstand large amounts of wear and tear?Mobilising critical applications onto EDA’s and smartphones have been successfully implemented across the country and Europe by field service businesses involved in mobile repair & maintenance, including the housing industry. The construction sector, couriers, emergency services and transport & logistics organisations have all mobilised their critical applications too. So too the retail sector, in particular ‘within 4 walls’ warehouse environments.With the rise in the popularity and functionality of WWLAN 3/4G enabled Tablets and smart badges (see the Motorola SB1), the hospitality & healthcare sectors are also seeking further ways of developing and implementing mobile applications. Furthermore, pretty much any business or organisation now needing a more mobile workforce may consider the need for email, contacts and calendar accessed securely ‘on the move’, as well as other office software. When considering which of your office applications are suited to the mobile environment, also consider the complexity of the office based package – would it be functional on a device which smaller screen size than the office monitor, with a smaller or touch screen keyboard and data required to be inputted sometimes in all weathers and conditions. Following general trends in 2013 and at the expense of pocket-ability, Tablets are proving increasingly popular as complex applications can be viewed more readily on them. Obviously if you are working on, or regularly visiting construction sites, warehouses, ports, airports, refrigeration plants, power stations, hotels, rough terrain including Forestry/wildlife parks, mining environments, or emergency services that maybe entering hazardous areas, you are likely to require rugged devices that are able to perform day in day out under harsh or challenging circumstances. The degree of rugged protection will vary according to your industry. Indeed for the petrochemical and other hazardous industries, a specialist non-sparking ATEX certified for Zone 2 and 22 (Gas and Dust) device may be required. In contract, field services or front of store in the retail sector for instance perhaps wouldn’t require the same degree of dust tight, water tight, temperature and drop resistance of an employee working on a construction site but may still want a very durable enterprise suitable device.Question 2: Should you go for devices based on Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5, Windows 8 Pro, Windows Phone 8, Apple iOS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry or use Web OS?This may be influenced by the mobile software provider you are working with, however it is worth noting that Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5 is the most stable platform that developers in the enterprise field have been working with for years, and Microsoft are supporting it until 2020; while in the Tablet market Windows 8 Pro offers compatibility with many Enterprise’s back end systems. Many other platforms have no support for developers at all. Conversely the end users for mobile projects are usually most familiar with iOS and Android devices. See our question on Training to overcome this! We would recommend seeing how much the mobile software you are adopting takes over the overall running of the device, locking down other functions. When your mobile apps software is installed the OS features of the device for the end user may not resemble the average consumer’s ‘user experience’ with Android or iOS as other functions are locked down. Question 3: Is yours a mobile project with a short life-span of a year or two - requiring short lived devices to match, or do you look to the long-term – both from IT management perspective and for a greater Return on Investment (ROI)?A consumer smartphone device is rarely on the market for longer than a year and manufacturer support, if there at all, drops off soon after, so batteries and parts for repairs can be more difficult to obtain. Furthermore if a device goes end of life before the end of a rollout or even thereafter, it can cause complications in having a ‘mixed fleet’ of devices with some users complaining they do not have the ‘latest model’.Enterprise designed devices, rugged or not, offers much longer periods till end of life – often 3 to even 5 years. This gives you time to rollout the project, train end users and IT support, receiving software and hardware support through with a well-judged aftercare support contract. New hardware releases are often thought through to avoid the need to replace accessories throughout your business. Question 4: Which platforms link seamlessly with your existing and planned IT infrastructure, and which devices will give you the best, most trouble-free, user experience?For Enterprise customers, Windows based products tend to have an advantage over Android and iOS. Hence our interest in the latest Windows 8 Pro tablets and Motorola Solutions future collaborations with Microsoft – indeed we are told in early 2014 to look out for an Enterprise or ‘Industrial’ Windows Phone 8 version – previewed in video clip here: You may like this glimpse of the device around 1.29 min. video – the platform fitting into the Microsoft Windows 8 stable, combined with a suitably rugged, long term supported EDA.The effects of downtime and loss of productivity can be hard to quantify and allow for at the procurement stage. However for end users and IT Departments time, hassle and loss of income can be highly stressful and costly to any organisation - caused by faulty/damaged devices, particularly when parts and service are ‘end of life’ demanding even more IT Department input.Likewise every time a repair bill has to be raised it will be costing your accounts department time and therefore money when they could be doing other things – an enterprise client we work with had established that every Account process, such as getting a repair cost signed off, cost the organisation ?60.00 in lost time input - so worth trying to avoid if possible! It’s therefore important to factor in reliability and endurance for your investment. The prettiest and most trendy devices won’t necessarily ‘cut the mustard’ in a tough environment. Question 5: What are the training and support ramifications and what level of service and support will you need?To get the highest return on investment from the roll out of a new field service device and application, it is best to plan in training time for end users as devices are deployed. Enterprise devices and apps can, for practical reasons such as IT device control, security, and data input control, may not be as end user friendly as the consumer products now familiar for personal use. However, a simple presentation on key software and hardware features to users before the rollout is completed can remove many of the frustrations some find in moving from a paper based ‘familiar ‘system used for years, to a new digital solution. Once trained and using a device, it is also to a company’s advantage to minimise user retaining costs by deploying an enterprise class rather than consumer style device if possible, as enterprise devices usually have extended product life cycles. Indeed, with consumer smartphones, a device can be on the market for little more than a year before becoming ‘end of life’. This often requires new accessories or adds additional consumer features that, while not relevant to an enterprise application, give users the feeling they ‘must have ‘the newer device. This can lead to a higher turnover of older equipment as users seek to justify needing the new replacement model, often only months after a rollout has completed. Users want the last offering even if it isn’t ‘tried and tested’.Replacement equipment is often only acquired at a much higher cost than the initial ‘subsidised’ devices whilst constantly coping with shorter life span equipment reaching end of life can add additional training pressure on an IT department, as well as complicating the support for older equipment, with accessories for end of life models proving harder to come by. Look for technical support for your hardware for duration of its planned lifetime to maximise the support available to your IT department – support that is often lacking with many consumer devices. Changes to your software application or user circumstances and equipment may need additional technical support from the manufacturer. For example, new vehicles may result in a change in Bluetooth car kits that the device and its Technical Support team need to be able to address if possible. These hidden costs of supporting a device rollout are sometimes not given enough consideration during an initial requisition process and minimising the number of times training needs to be conducted incurs longer term cost savings.You may have initial software requirements or budgetary constraints and be looking at consumer devices. Do then ask us about our leasing and subsidised device options we have negotiated. Check with us, as we may have arranged a service plan – to cover any repair and damage to the device (baring malicious intent). Our top rugged device recommendations come with the accidental damage and warranty extended cover for 3 or with certain devices, even up to 5 years’ service and support cover. If requested, next day buffer stock replacement of equipment is also offered, along with a buffer stock ‘return to base’ service and delivery to a central It office or an engineer’s pre-agreed address . We can also include for many devices, the supervising of the ‘build’ of your software solutions that can then be preloaded into a buffer stock device prior to being despatched from, for example, a Motorola service centre. Preloaded software, despatched with a buffer stock replacement device direct to an end user, can minimise your IT department’s support costs.To reduce the amount of this time needed for the transaction of a service repair, and to keep other field service users out ‘in the field’ aim to get a swift turn around in service for as long as possible form your supplier. Question 6: What Enterprise Device will suit you best, Rugged or Consumer? Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)The FactsDon’t just take our word for it, the TCO research presented here has been investigated and compiled by VDC research, web: bottom line is rugged devices reduce TCO over lifecycle. They are built to do what it says on the spec sheet, and in spaces such as warehousing, manufacturing, field services, engineering, transport & logistics, refrigeration, environmental sites, zoos, healthcare, hospitals, government agencies such as the Police & Fire Service, defence contractors, construction sites and including mission critical applications for many more types of business, this knowledge could save you a fortune. AnalysisNearly 50% of mobile computing costs are associated with worker productivity downtime when the device fails. Rugged devices are proven to be 32% more cost effective across 5 years of TCO. Failure rates on consumer devices can be as high as twenty times per year, so it’s important to include device failure into your business case. There are both direct and indirect cost implications to consider. Many businesses only look at ‘hard’ upfront costs, but the ‘soft’ costs can spiral and have a significant impact on your business. In a tough economic environment is easy to be penny wise but pound foolish. The way to maximise your ROI is to minimise your TCO. (See Total Cost of Ownership pdf.)Procurement departments are mainly concerned with upfront acquisition costs, but basing a decision on this type of consideration alone will almost certainly prove to be more expensive in the longer term. There are 4 categories to consider when choosing a device:Consumer smart phone – Digital assistant Durable – Consumer grade enhanced with integrated accelerometers, spill-proof keyboards etc.Semi-rugged – IP54, rubberised edging to absorb impact, secured caseRugged – Meets military standard (810), meets and exceeds IP64 standardsRugged devices are a higher percentage of TCO. Industrial devices lower TCO as they stay in service longer, need fewer repairs and last longer, with an added benefit of being able to be re-deployed in other areas of the business. 35% of consumer devices had been replaced after only two years compared to only 2% of rugged devices. After three years 80% of consumer devices had been replaced.The top 5 causes of device failure:Liquid exposure – 64%Excessive hot/cold temperature exposure – 24%EMI Exposure – 18%Dropping device – 12%Dust particulate exposureFor mission critical applications rugged solutions have a more favourable TCO versus a consumer grade solution. Productivity loss represents a significant proportion of TCO, especially for non-rugged devices. It is this type of hidden or ‘soft’ costs that outweigh the initial cost saving upfront of a consumer grade device.There are 2 trends apparent:Consumer grade devices have a significantly lower acquisition cost than ruggedMaintenance, replacement and downtime costs associated with consumer grade devices are universally higher. Over 5 years, rugged devices in the field save 32% in TCO.Motorola Solutions test and rate their durable, semi-rugged and rugged devices according to stringent, recognised global industry standards. With rigorous testing Motorola Solutions maximise the performance and reliability of their enterprise devices.Testing Standards & Protocols ExplainedThere are four respected non-profit independent sources:IEC – The International Electrical Commission – established a specific global system to facilitate conformity. Standards are described numerically, e.g. 60950-1CENELEC - European Committee for Electro-technical StandardisationIP - The European Ingress Protection Standards for Electrical EquipmentUnited States MilitaryWhen deciding what environment a device will be utilised in the IP (Ingress Protection Rating) is vital for choosing the right level of industrialisation:SOLID FOREIGN OBJECTSWATEREXAMPLE8 – Immersion past 1 metreIP67 (Heavy industry)7 – Immersion up-to 1 metreIP64 (Rugged)6 – Dust tight6 – Powerful water jetsIP54 (semi-rugged)5 – Most dust5 – Water jetsIP47 (commercial, durable)4 – 1mm Most wires, screws etc.4 – Splashing water3 – 2.5 mm Tools, thick wires etc.3 – Spraying water2 – 12.5mm Fingers or similar objects2 – Dripping water (tilted up to 15 degrees)1 – > 50mm1 – Dripping waterOn the IP scale, the higher the numbers, the higher the level of protection for a particular device. Commercial Grade – IP42, business PDA device, sealed, 3 foot drop onto vinyl covered concreteEnterprise Grade – IP54 Light industrial environment, durable EDA, multiple 4 foot drops onto shop floorIndustrial Grade – IP64 Dust tight, spraying, splashing water, multiple 6 foot drops, condensation resistant, e.g. suits a hazardous locationTY video: IP Testing of Motorola Vs. Military StandardsUS Military – MIL-STD 810F Developed and published by the U.S. Department of Defence and the U.S. Army. It’s one of the most comprehensive and effective standards in use today. The standards specify the chamber test methods, including sand and dust testing. There are five areas where Motorola exceed the MIL-STD-810F standard:Motorola TypicalStandardDevice Operating StatusUnit operational - OnUnit not operatingDrop surfaceConcretePlywood over concreteTemperatureAcross temperature range23 – 25 CelciusNumber of drops3626Number of devices 1 per room/cold/hot temp. test5 at room temperatureMotorola Enterprise TestingThe Motorola devices are tested at three key developmental stages: design, pre-production and post-production, ensuring the product is as reliable as possible. (ALT), Accelerated Life Testing is also carried out, which simulates 5 years of use in the field to produce long-term usage.Few vendors publish a Tumble Test, (the litmus test for endurance), which complies with IEC 68-2-32. Ruggedness specs are based on industry standards. The Drop Test is based on MIL-STD-810F and actually exceeds it in five areas. The sealing spec complies with IEC529. Drop is the stress test for mechanical design. Tumble is the stress test for endurance, and Motorola is the pioneer and industry leader and publish an industry relevant tumble spec: IEC 68-2-32. Edges and corners are tested in drop testing and the tumble testing. During Motorola Drop Testing it is unacceptable to lose a network connection, device to re-boot, or to lose any data. Rugged is the right choice for the fastest ROI: requiring less repair, less employee downtime, therefore yielding a faster ROI in the long run.Rugged/Consumer Comparison TableAs the charts below demonstrate, rugged devices will give you a competitive advantage. RUGGED DEVICESCONSUMER DEVICESMotorola Rugged mobile computers with superior ergonomics – offer extensive benefits to employees & management mercial devices are typically out of commission considerably longer than the industrial/durable devices.These devices are less likely to need repair or premature replacementDowntime typically costs users of commercial devices about 4 times more than the purchase price over the life of the device.Motorola rugged devices are significantly less expensive Vs. consumer grade over 5 year span.Shorter warranties may also contribute to the higher costs of commercial devices. Rugged devices needed fewer repairs & lasted far longer when compared to consumer devices. Human costs, operations / staff time & downtime / productivity lossRugged devices can be used in multiple instances across business processes, from cold storage, to shop floor & warehouse solutions. Re-deployment costs are lower as product lasts longer across usage.Consumer devices typically fail more in warehouse, field operations, transportation & industrial environments.Hard & Soft CostsHARD COSTSSOFT COSTSHardwarePlatforms peripherals, external scanners, cables, accessories, batteries etc.SoftwareUpfront fees, license fees, development customisationDevelopmentApp. Design/development (standard & customised), integration, internal & 3rd party staging.TrainingAutomated ordering, initial user training, on-going user training, new OS & applications training.OperationalProvisioning replacement devices, carrier activation, system maintenance, 3rd party/internal tech support, hardware/software upgrades, application management.DowntimeHardware replacement, cost of manpower/wages, lost revenues & lost opportunity costs.The final decision is always down to the customer, but we will tell you our honest appraisal of your needs when quoting for a mobile deployment.For more detailed information on Total Cost of Ownership see the Motorola White Paper. ................
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