Do You Have a Mobile Workforce Network Strategy?

As enterprises struggle to perform and succeed in today’s fast-paced, hyper-competitive marketplace, they are challenged to ensure that their increasingly mobile workers are well supported. Instead of treating mobile workers as one group and assuming they all have the same needs, your enterprise can provide exactly the support needed by evaluating mobility needs based on specifics.

This means you need to know who your mobile workers are. Before launching a mobile workforce network strategy, it makes sense to begin by profiling the different workers based on their jobs, roles and the information they need to get their work done.

Here are some key profiles that Cisco research has identified:

• Road Warriors. These tend to be executives, outside sales reps and consultants. They may spend more than 80% of their time away from the office traveling or at customer and partner locations. They heavily use email and voice, but tend to have a lower use of back-end business applications.


• Campus Mobiles. These might be IT support staff, healthcare workers, teachers, manufacturing and production staff, or retail associates and managers. They may spend 60% of their time away from their desks. They rely on mobile communications within their campus. And they have heavy, often continuous, application use.


• Corridor Cruisers. You might find these people in marketing, human resources, finance, R&D, IT,  plant and facilities management and maintenance, safety and security staff roles. They typically spend more than 20% of their time away from their primary office desks. They are known for heavy application access and voice services use, but moderate e-mail access.


• Field Force. These are supply chain, fleet, delivery, logistics, public sector and safety, and case workers. They tend to spend most of their time outside the campus, often moving to multiple sites during the day to complete tasks. They rely on specific application access, but are known for light e-mail usage, and moderate voice usage.


• Teleworkers. These tend to be customer service rep¬resentatives, IT help desk workers or inside sales. They primarily work from home. They exhibit continuous and heavy application access in addition to e-mail. They may also be voice-intensive depending upon job duties.

Having profiled these workers, you will be in a much better position to identify what mobile strategies and solutions are most likely to be appropriate to your enterprise. You can turn mobility into a competitive advantage by using it as key driver of business value.

Comments

[Austin]

I love the breakdown of each type of mobile worker...some companies do not realize that understanding their mobile workforce is key to maximizing efficiency from an operational standpoint. Understanding how your 'Field Force' employees perform is critical in ensuring job completion in a timely manner. There have been some technologies used to help with this process.

[Austin]

Check out the mobile workforce management solution offered by TOA Technologies:

http://toatech.com/solutions/mobile-workforce-management.php