Frontline workers are quite literally your company’s ‘front’. They are the first point of contact for your customers, they possess the business knowledge as well as understand your customer’s requirements, their reviews about your product and also address their concerns while using the products. Frontline workers are a good mix of field-force, factory employees, floor employees, retail executives as well as sales and support teams. As businesses transition towards digitization and mobility to drive productivity, it is important to have the digital transformation of the frontline workforce on the radar.
Focussing on the digital transformation of frontline employees is critical for businesses to drive a thorough mobility exercise that cascades to establish business growth and desired ROI.
In our blog on why frontline workers need mobile devices, we described the criticality of frontline worker empowerment for business and how the use of mobile devices plays a crucial role in improving operational efficiency as well as engagement of the field force and frontline workers.
In this article, we will elaborate on the various capabilities an MDM tool should have for successfully empowering the frontline workers.
Top MDM Capabilities to Manage Frontline Worker Devices
1. Kiosk Mode
The MDM tool used for managing frontline workers’ devices should have kiosk mode functionality. Not all frontline workers will be well-versed with digital devices and a device fully loaded with apps and content can overwhelm a frontline employee. Not to forget that unnecessary applications on frontline workers’ devices can invite distractions. Hence, the MDM should have a kiosk mode, a device management mode used for single-purpose devices, wherein a device can be locked to one or more business-centric apps.
2. Password Policies
The field force or frontline employees often work outside the traditional boundaries of a workplace, share the device between multiple stakeholders as well as customers. To ensure that despite being shared devices, the security of corporate data is not compromised, as well as the device is not misused for any other purpose, the chosen MDM should have the capability to enforce password policies on managed devices.
3. Remote App Management
The biggest advantage of using mobile devices for frontline tasks is that it facilitates access to business applications on the go, independent of the employee’s physical location. The IT admins need to install, update or uninstall business apps on the device of frontline workers and hence, application management is a crucial feature that an MDM for frontline workers should offer.
4. Web Content Filtering & Secure Browsing
When the mobile devices used by frontline workers are equipped with web browsers to facilitate browsing for business purposes, it can also result in the browsing of unnecessary websites causing loss of productivity. To tackle this, the MDM solution for frontline workers should offer the capability for web content filtering where the IT admins can configure which websites are allowed on the device. To ensure that the security of corporate data on the device, IT can block untrusted websites and also configure the browser settings.
5. OS Updates
Frequent OS updates & patch fixes are necessary for devices to perform at optimum efficiency. And it is crucial to test that business applications are stable on the latest operating system update. To ensure that there is no loss of productive hours of frontline workers, the MDM should have the capability to delay OS updates until a stable version of business apps is ready for use.
6. Content Management
The field force needs continuous access to the latest business resources and up-to-date documentation. To ensure that there are no information gaps, the mobile device management tool used for frontline workers should aid the IT admins in remotely publishing, updating, deleting various content files such as text, images, videos, etc.
7. Peripheral control
To ensure the device is not used for any other purposes than business, the IT admins should be able to control the device peripherals such as power, home buttons, volume control buttons, screen display orientation, and brightness, etc. This especially is needed for devices deployed to frontline workers in retail for product catalog browsing or hospitality for check-in or feedback, for where the devices are also configured considering the ideal user experience to be extended to the customers.
8. Device Tracking
Since the field force operates at varied locations, it is important for the MDM solution to track the device location to ensure device security as well as employee productivity. For instance, for the workers of a factory or a manufacturing unit, it is critical that the device is used only within the restricted premises and the employee doesn’t carry it outside the designated area.
An ideal mobile device management solution for field force should have location tracking as well as the geo-fencing capability to ensure that the device is used strictly in the permitted radius.
9. Device Monitoring & Detection of Security Violations
Since the IT teams of companies and organizations deploying a large number of devices for frontline workers have to constantly ensure the maintenance of a huge device inventory, the MDM solution should offer timely reports of the device usage, performance and device metrics and should be able to have a 360-degree view of the device inventory from a single console. Also, the MDM tool should be able to detect security violations and generate reports and alerts for the same.
10. Remote Troubleshooting
While empowering the frontline workers with technology and mobile devices, it is critical to ensure that the devices are up and running at all times. To upkeep the device performance and to reduce the downtime of devices deployed to the mobile workforce, the MDM solution should have the capability to empower the IT admins to resolve device issues remotely, generate quick fixes and create support tickets to quickly escalate the issue. The remote troubleshooting capability ensures that device downtime is mitigated quickly and costs to bring the device to a service center are saved.
11. Communication Management
One of the most important factors to consider while empowering the frontline workers is to make them feel included in the organization. Often, the frontline workers feel disengaged since they might be working outside the conventional office space. Offering a streamlined communication channel is a great way to connect them to the rest of the team. Although organizations can make use of third-party tools for the same, having a secure communication channel to connect and collaborate within the organization is an add-on. Moreover, the MDM solution should not only offer a secure communication tool but also enhanced features to ensure security and encryption of data communicated over the tool, the capability to control cellular charges, preventing non-business calls, etc.
Scalefusion MDM for frontline workers ensures that these capabilities are met and also extends additional features for providing a cohesive mobile device usage for business growth. With Scalefusion MDM, empowering frontline workers while improving the overall productivity of the organization is a cakewalk!
