TechTalk Building a User-Centric Mobile Strategy
Workplace mobility has expanded rapidly, and it’s become a central component of the employee experience.
By Insight Editor / 1 Oct 2020 / Topics: Mobility Modern workplace
By Insight Editor / 1 Oct 2020 / Topics: Mobility Modern workplace
Enabling outside-the-office productivity requires a strategic approach to technology. In this week’s TechTalk, Christopher Hurd of Insight Connected Workforce and Aaryn Anderson of Insight Digital Innovation discuss how future-ready mobile device procurement, deployment and management drives new business outcomes and increases worker satisfaction.
To experience this week’s episode, listen on the player above, watch the conversation below, or scroll down to read a complete transcript. You can also subscribe to Insight TechTalk on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Audio transcript:
Published October 1, 2020
CHRISTOPHER
Hello, thanks for joining us for another Insight TechTalk. I'm Christopher Hurd, Apple Alliance's lead for Connected Workforce. And I'm joined today by Aaryn Anderson, national strategy and design lead for Insight's Digital Innovation team.
So, the workplace is undergoing massive changes both environmentally and technologically. Due to the rise of mobile operating systems, increasingly fragmented endpoints and traditional approaches to IT, IT organizations are facing a complex new paradigm of mobile work. As a result of this disruption, IT teams are struggling to balance two objectives; providing the most preferred experience for modern end users, and doing so strategically, efficiently and in a way that yields long term value for the organization. So, Aaryn, why is it important for organizations to have a mobile strategy? What's the purpose?
AARYN
Yeah, thanks, Christopher. What we've found is, you know, really, with the rise of mobility in the workplace, it becomes a very complex environment, right? We want to embrace the new working ways of generations, multi-generational workforces, but also provide people a natural way of working the way that they're accustomed to, right? We all use personal devices in our day to day lives, and that's transcended over into the workplace, and we really look to embrace that. As we look at that as really embracing it from the user's perspective, what does the user need to be successful in their job?
Obviously, we do different tasks on our desktop than we do on mobile phone. And we want to take that into consideration and make sure that we're designing experiences that allow for success, allow those people to achieve the task that they're looking to. And we find a lot of opportunity within the mobile environment to really streamline processes.
You know, typically, we find people in the workplace that they don't sit at their desk, from nine to five anymore, right? They’re up, they’re moving around. And so we look at processes that tend to be overly complex or manual, and find ways that we can streamline those, automate them, you know, as people are moving about their day, with less load on the individual and place a lot of that through the device and the applications that can be developed for their specific environment.
The other last thing that we found is, a lot of times, you know, people look at a mobile strategy as just a device. And that's where we find a lot of our clients, you know, mobile strategy starts to fall apart, or they don't have a strategy that's holistic, and the nature of what it entails to pull off a successful program. And what I mean by that is, you know, we need to consider the applications that run on the device, along with the device. Organizational structures make sure that we have the right support systems in place. But there's also procurement of those devices. There's provisioning and management, you know, what is the infrastructure of the building and facilities that those people operate in? And we need to take all of those into consideration. Otherwise, we find a lot of you know, mobile deployments kind of fall flat.
CHRISTOPHER
Yeah, so a lot of complexity, there's new multi-generational workforce, obviously, streamlining processes. Seems like there's a lot, how does someone get started? Like, how do you effectively approach mobile strategy for the workplace?
AARYN
Yeah, so when we looked at this, you know, we've had a pretty structured approach, as I mentioned, first off is we really want to be user centric. And we want to bring that user and really the user experience forward as to what is the right experience for that individual to be successful. With this, we've actually created an offering along with in partnership with Apple, called the Enterprise Mobility Enablement Program. And it's a three-tiered process that guides organizations in developing that mobile strategy for their workplace along with embracing best practices with Apple devices.
CHRISTOPHER
So, three-tiered process, can you tell me a little bit more about the Enterprise Mobility Enablement solution and how it's been designed to ensure client success?
AARYN
Yeah, sure. So, the three tiers they're strategically built to kind of stack on top of each other, layer cake, right? You start out with the foundation, and the overall structure, we refer to it as walk, jog, run, right? We want to start out with the very basics, make sure that we're--
CHRISTOPHER
Right.
AARYN
Covering the, you know, a very broad perspective as to what that user requires to be successful. And so that first tier the walk phase, is really about observation of that individual, we often refer to it as a shoulder to shoulder exercise, where we're doing firsthand observation with that individual that we determine the persona. And really observe what they do, through their time from when they enter work, what tasks do they perform during their day to day job, and to when they leave the office, and just really do a comprehensive documentation of all the opportunities that exist where we can leverage mobility.
The second tier there is jog, which we take those learnings and we bring that back to the stakeholders. And it's really a business alignment exercise, we do that in a workshop environment, and get a lot of perspectives from different individuals to understand and prioritize what's really important and delivers value.
And then the final phase, the run is where we really get into comprehensive documentation, of building a design brief and technical brief, to be able to successfully achieve the outcomes. But along with that, we produce a prototype, to be able to bring that vision to life. It's not a, you know, working, it's a working prototype, but not a one that's hooked up to data or any it's really about a clickable environment that allows someone to kind of touch and feel what that experience would be in the future.
CHRISTOPHER
Okay, so three tiers, they're meant to build on each other. Can an organization if they want to get started, can they jump right in to say jog, or run? Or do they always have to start with walk?
AARYN
Yeah, so they do build on top of each other. So, we always start out with walk.
CHRISTOPHER
Okay.
AARYN
And that's really, you know, if you think about, it's kind of what we refer to as dipping the toe in the water, right? It gives you that initial understanding of where the opportunities are for mobility in the workplace. And we come out of that with really a document of saying, here's where you know, affordances for mobility, this is where the strengths lie. And maybe that turns into, you know, we have accessories that are required, maybe some scanning options, to be able to attach to that device, maybe there's sensors, right. But again, we really want to look at that holistically and see, you know, based on the nuances of the workplace and that individual, what they need to do is, that's where we come out with that documentation is where we find those opportunities.
CHRISTOPHER
Awesome. Thanks for explaining that the walk, jog, run in more detail. I love it, because I think we've worked with clients in the past where they were able to use that clickable prototype, as a way of having that business justification conversation with leadership to take the project forward. So, I think that's a critical step.
AARYN
Yeah, absolutely. And that's really where the prototype we landed on that is really a key deliverable. We can go forward with a bunch of PowerPoints or, you know, keynote slides of saying, Hey, this is the vision of what we want to do, but until somebody can put that in their hands, and they can actually see it on the device that it's intended to operate on. And they can start to click around, and they can see the workflows. Again, you know, it just solidifies the value of that experience. And we see it as really a success to be able to achieve funding from an organization.
CHRISTOPHER
Oh, that's great.
AARYN
Yeah, so, you know, the EME, as we refer to it often, Enterprise Mobility Enablement, like I said, it's really intended for companies that are struggling with their mobility strategy, somebody that's been, you know, kicking it around for a while, we also see a lot of times that, you know, with if they've had kind of false starts, right? Where they put in a device order, maybe every individual has a device, but they aren't really getting used, the adoption wasn't there. And so, it allows us to go back and repurpose or reframe, on really what is needed. And that's where that, as I say, being user centric, and that user first perspective is really critical. And going back is, you know, a lot of the failures of strategies that we've seen don't consider the user, and they put out solutions that don't align to their real needs. And that's where we find devices ending up in drawers, which is, you know, it's not a win for anyone.
CHRISTOPHER
Right. Yeah, that's a good point.
AARYN
Yeah. So, I'm curious from your side, right. We've talked about a holistic strategy. It's not just about devices, it's not just about applications, but it's about procurement, it's about management, it's about infrastructure, and I know that you have a lot of experience in that space. So, I'm wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about capabilities that you provide and how we round out a really comprehensive strategy for mobile.
CHRISTOPHER
Yeah, so one of the things with Insight is you know, we define ourselves as a super solutions integrator. And really, we describe this new breed of systems integrator who are digital transformation experts, that's easy for me to say. So, a single partner that can undertake the full scope of digital transformation project that could provide strategic guidance, the whole end to end capabilities to envision, build, deploy, and maintain those modern IT solutions. So, when you apply that to what we're doing with Insights Apple offerings, we can leverage the strength of the Enterprise Mobility Enablement approach that you and your team take and couple that with the strategic consulting of Connected Workforce, to execute on the deployment, the management, and the support of the mobile strategy created from your team.
And so, what our team will do is we'll come in, we'll help ensure that the infrastructure is configured and optimized to leverage that zero-touch deployment for the mobile endpoints. We'll also help automate any provisioning workflows to streamline the procurement of the hardware into the enrollment, into the Apple business manager in the management platform. And then ensure that we can quickly and easily configure those devices, deploy and support those mobile devices once they're out in the field. And really, the whole key is that our solution is designed to eliminate complexity and reduce cost, the cost of managing those mobile endpoints so that we can help deliver on that great end user experience.
AARYN
Yeah, I love that. It's critical, that zero touch deployment, and that's where I think a lot of value comes through and, you know, it takes, alleviates the IT team from having to do a lot of that support. Really great.
CHRISTOPHER
Yeah. So, you know, I love the fact that what we can do is help execute what you can help the clients envision. So, it really is a great partnership. So, Aaryn, we're coming up to our time, I want to say thank you for joining us today and providing your insights. It's been a pleasure.
In closing, just want to share with our audience if you'd like to find out more inspiration and insights for the future of business, check out our digital magazine, the Tech Journal, you can read and subscribe at insight.com/techjournal. And, if you'd like to get in touch with either Aaryn or myself, you can reach us at appleservices@insight.com.
Thanks for joining.
AARYN
Thank you.
[Music]
Senior Manager - Alliance Services
Christopher has over 20 years of experience as an enterprise mobility veteran with vast background in solution selling, mobile device management, strategic partnership development and business transformation. Christopher is responsible for building services programs to help our clients accelerate the adoption of our Alliance Partner services and solution through his Services Business Development team.
Senior Manager of Digital Innovation
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