In the latest of our Field Service News webinars, FSN Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland was joined by Sandy MCaskie, Sales Director EMAC for Xplore and Bob Ashenbrenner,President Durable Mobility Technologies as they gave an excellent session as they gave us the benefit of the insight they've gained from years of experience and hundreds of mobility implementations - to help field service organisations get the most from their mobility projects.

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• How to get the green light for your mobility project
• Why buying for the enterprise differs from buying consumer devices
• Exploring the common drivers for mobility projects
• The importance of form factors amongst rugged mobile options
• Understanding how to get your mobility projects approved
• Getting the right stakeholders invested in your mobility project
• Why and how you should build a strong project team across operations and IT for your mobility project
• Putting together the RFP for your mobility project
• Testing and piloting your RFP
• The importance of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for your enterprise mobility solution[/unordered_list]

In this excerpt taken from Oldland's Q&A session at the three discuss the importance of approaching enterprise mobility in a holistic and integrated manner that taes into account both your hardware and software requirements simultaneously.

"For those companies out there - and there are an awful lot of them still, that are approaching this process [developing a mobility strategy for their field service operation] for the first time, how much should the decision in what tools to use in an ecosystem be intertwined - or should the decisions around software an hardware be treated separately?" Oldland asked.

"From my perspective I think companies tend to look at the software applications way before they look at the hardware question and I think that's a big mistake" McCaskie replied.

"If it's the first time around they've implemented an IT mobile solution, they tend to look to port over their old paper based processes onto the new system. What that results is that whatever software they go for, there tends to be a certain amount of rewriting and bespoke development for themselves. When that happens all of a sudden you've got costs down the road when it comes to updating the software."

'This is why working with a hardware supplier such as Xplore can mitigate that because when the later phases of implementation are rolled out some eighteen or twenty four months later, the device is going to be the same - they don't have to think about getting their bespoke software rewritten - you can't say that about consumer grade devices."

"You really don't want to let the tail wag the dog, you don't want to let your device limit your software options" added Ashenbrenner.

"When you look at both of these together, you want to be picking devices that are the easiest to use relative to software - because the software is your process. The software really controls your order of work and you don't want to pick a device that becomes a straight jacket."

"And there is then the other piece to this which you mentioned earlier in the session Kris and Sandy has picked up here as well which is by getting a device that has been designed to operate for the next three to five years you save yourself an awful lot of churn and change. Xplore has tablets that work in vehicle docks that haven't changed in five or seven or even more years and that is by design."

"If you'd been buying consumer devices, and you were buying over a period of two or three years you'd have to be buying different devices at the time you deployed, you'd be buying different cases that aren't interchageable, different vehicle docks and so on."

"So you absolutely need to look at the whole solution, and make sure neither hardware nor software is pinning you into a corner."

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