The purpose of any mobile device deployment is to improve efficiency, accuracy, and productivity for the employees using the systems.
But when IT has to address performance issues on a case-by-case basis, that can quickly lead to workers stranded without devices as swamped IT teams investigate causes and solutions—not exactly the definition of efficiency or productivity.
And when IT is forced to recreate issues out of context to investigate root causes, the drag on time and efficiency can be felt across operations—and still, it can lead teams down paths toward “solutions” that might not actually address the real issue.
When a leading medical corporation was experiencing recurring intermittent performance issues with mobile devices in multiple locations, the problems were wasting significant end user time and limited IT resources, so they tapped the experts at Barcoding, Inc., for a solution.
Together with our strategic partners at Connect, Inc., we helped implement a solution that simplified work for everyone—end users and IT team members alike by achieving new levels of remote visibility into devices, networks, applications, and more.
Here’s how we did it.
Situation: IT Resources Overburdened by Individual Troubleshooting Demands
The medical corporation’s warehouse teams were experiencing disruptive performance issues in more than one location and had little way of knowing whether root causes were hardware, wireless networks, the new ERP application, or something else. That added up to a lot of wasted time and IT resources asking end users follow-up questions, recreating issues, and troubleshooting one case at a time.
Previously, Barcoding had helped this corporation replace its sales team’s sled-equipped Apple mobile devices that had failed to deliver the efficiencies the teams needed. After struggling with iPhones’ charging demands, having to charge sleds separately, and not always being able to get the sleds and mobile phones to pair, the medical corporation worked with Barcoding to select and deploy Zebra TC-57 devices for an all-in-one solution with the flexibility of the Android operating system.
The switch was a definite improvement in efficiency. Next, the corporation’s IT team recognized the growing need for an enterprise-level understanding of its systems—hardware, software applications, networks, and interactions with its enterprise resource planning solution. In short, they needed a faster way to achieve the equivalent of “looking under the hood” in near-real time to gain immediate insights into root causes and respond faster and more effectively to issues as they arose.
Analysis: Multiple Intersecting Challenges—Hardware, Software, Networks, Etc.
The medical corporation’s centralized IT team’s manual troubleshooting approach led to an often extended process of investigation and resolution by requiring IT to recreate conditions to evaluate issues and determine root causes, and assign the fix to the appropriate team. But in addition to sheer costs of time, labor and logistics, here are two major problems with that approach:
- Recreating the user experience was often, with a lack of data, hit or miss.
- IT might have to send team members on site visits to work alongside users while waiting for the intermittent issues to occur again.
The corporation needed a better solution to alleviate burdens on its IT department. At the same time, IT recognized the opportunity, with expert guidance and implementation support, to achieve greater visibility into device hardware, software, networks, and interactions with their ERP solution across its enterprise environment.
Because it had already successfully worked with Barcoding’s GoLive Services™ to deploy a fast, broad rollout of new devices before, the medical corporation knew they could trust the solutions recommended by the Barcoding team.
Resolution: New Devices, Android OS & Mobile Systems Intelligence
In addition to the sales divisions' TC-57s, Barcoding helped select new Honeywell CK65 handheld computers for the warehouse to augment existing devices, and implemented Mobile Systems Intelligence (MSI), a solution from Barcoding’s 2022 Innovation Champion, Connect, Inc.
MSI is a fully automated, always-on, digital service that monitors, captures, and diagnoses system anomalies to quickly identify root causes.
MSI relieves IT of the struggle to piece together a whole issue using anecdotal end user reporting and scraps of data. Its automations enable IT teams to move faster toward data-driven problem-solving, rather than tinkering with devices and troubleshooting.
MSI’s reporting system is simple and streamlined for end users: just click a button on the device, and MSI gathers and delivers its data to IT. And, since MSI is always on, it can even detect problems like network issues before they lead to downtime.
Barcoding’s team paired MSI with our StayLive Services™ to streamline IT functions and provide uninterrupted mobility support for end users across multiple locations.
Results: Streamlined Root Cause Analysis & Revolutionary Enterprise IT Visibility
MSI’s automated root-cause analysis reporting vastly reduces the IT department’s timeframes for troubleshooting and solving issues that arise.
The medical corporation’s IT department no longer depends solely on users to understand and articulate their experience in reporting issues. Now, using the MSI widget, users can simply tap a button to report an issue, and MSI automatically delivers the incident-related data from the device to IT, streamlining root cause analysis and reporting to resolve issues faster.
And now IT has full, remote visibility into real-time performance data with MSI’s dashboard to monitor health and performance of devices, networks, and applications, plus system-wide metrics to clearly show how its infrastructure is performing—and how performance impacts the business.
MSI enables the team to identify issues and triage appropriately from the start, assigning tasks to its network team, SAP team, or mobile device team, as indicated based on the performance data and automated reporting.
The corporation’s IT team was able to go from reactive problem-solving to proactive mobile device management and achieve an efficient and productive day-to-day experience for IT, end users, and customers alike.
About Mobile Systems Intelligence by Connect, Inc.
Connect, Inc., has been solving connectivity and user experience challenges for its customers in IT and Operations for more than 30 years. MSI automates mobile-user data capture, streamlines the processes diagnosing and resolving issues, and validates resolution across the enterprise to help IT teams deliver more with less.
About Honeywell
Honeywell invents and manufactures technologies that address some of the world’s most critical challenges around energy, safety, security, productivity, and global urbanization.
Learn How More About Data-Driven IT Operations Excellence
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