By 2025, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices worldwide is expected to reach 75 billion. With hundreds of thousands of mobile employees relying on these devices out on the front lines – there’s a real premium on knowing how well every device is performing. Yet, many organisations are paying the price of ‘not knowing’ such information.
Businesses today cannot afford to lose time or money on guessing where their devices are or if they’re being fully utilised. Reliance on guesswork impacts employee productivity, which in turn impacts operational efficiency and ultimately the bottom line.
Mobility and productivity are synonymous these days: if a device goes down, so does a worker.
The potential ripple effect of the smallest disruption in today’s supply chains is quite significant. In the few minutes it may take for a warehouse worker to grab a replacement mobile device from a charging station, fulfilment of dozens of orders may be stalled, leading to delayed shipments and missed delivery deadlines – something that could be equally detrimental to small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMB) and global corporations alike.
That’s precisely why proactive mobile device management should be a priority for every organisation, no matter the size or industry.
So how do you take control? Actionable insights
A suite of tools including sensors, RFID and data analytics can be used to give businesses actionable insights about each of its device’s location and status in real time. Referred to collectively as ‘Operational Visibility and Control’ services, these solutions are becoming increasingly accessible and affordable, and are the key to ensuring that businesses get the most out of their devices and workers.
Operational Visibility and Control services, such as Zebra’s VisibilityIQ Foresight solution, are extremely intelligent. They are much more expansive in their device monitoring than manual maintenance processes, which can something miss issues simmering below the surface, faults that develop in between inspections or future factors that humans simply cannot detect.
VisibilityIQ Foresight intelligently combines data from multiple touch points in real time, and translates the data into an easy-to-grasp, colour-coded dashboard that clearly indicates needed actions and alerts for your entire mobile device fleet.
For example, VisibilityIQ can instantly identify any threats to worker productivity, such as low battery or software updates. Over time, Operational Visibility and Control services get ‘smarter’ and more tailored to your business, by using algorithms that ‘learn’ from previous events that may impact the performance of workers devices, such as seasonal spikes in usage.
These services can collectively predict increased usage demands for example, that could strain devices or lead to potential system failures, allowing businesses to take remedial action before downtime happens.
The takeaway
Visibility solutions can improve worker productivity and, therefore, customer satisfaction; and reduce environmental, health and safety and data security risks – all of which increase the return on investment (ROI) for any organisation.
Having foresight – and the ability to act now to avoid a future device failure – will ensure that a mobility solution does what it’s supposed to do: keeping employees operating at peak efficiency levels.
Visibility IQ: Discover clarity in device data and avoid disruption
To learn more about how you can have visibility over your entire fleet of mobile devices, watch our Webinar featuring Zebra’s tech evangelist, Daniel Park. This webinar demonstrates how you can get the most from your devices, workers and daily tasks, through device management solutions such as VisibilityIQ.