Mobile is the most obvious manifestation of digital transformation in industrial settings. When people use enterprise software from a mobile device, it indicates that the system is the lifeblood of the business. Even before taking into consideration the more transformational approaches to business that mobility can enable, your employees need to be able to connect to your core business processes and participate even if they are not sitting at their desks. If you cannot do this, you will struggle with anything in digital transformation.
Your company can make the most of its mobile devices in order facilitate digital transformation by:
- Facilitating near real-time inclusion in business processes requiring one’s attention.
- Taking advantage of geolocation features in a phone to deliver powerful and robust field service management functionality.
- Delivering augmented reality features, enabling a skilled senior technician, for instance, to consult on a challenging problem an equipment repair technician may encounter in the field.
- Increasing user engagement and increasing the amount of data making it into an enterprise application.
Mobility is important because it:
- Improves the customer experience in field service environments.
- Increases productive time of technical staff by allowing them to interact with systems like enterprise asset management or computerized maintenance management systems while in the field or at the machine on the plant floor.
- Improves the amount and quality of information available to those servicing assets or customers, allowing more efficient service and first-time-fix in field service environments and more reliable troubleshooting and less down time in a plant environment.
- Induces users to engage with software systems more frequently, increasing return on investment in enterprise software.