Mobilise Your Workforce 9 judged a resounding success

Representatives from the construction, facilities management, fleet and automotive sectors were amongst those who assembled at Microsoft’s Thames Valley Campus on November 10th, seeking to learn, discuss and share practical enterprise mobility best practice.

Steve Reynolds, Managing Director of TBS, said: “We were thrilled with both the turnout, and the level of dynamic interaction which was generated with a widely spread audience, who gave us excellent feedback.

“Events like Mobilise Your Workforce reinforce the need to go deeper in the discussion of technologies and their ground-level implementation.  Speakers from Morgan Est, British Car Auctions and Avis helped us to deliver that level of insight.”

A commonly expounded message was the need to involve field users of enterprise mobility solutions at each stage of solution implementation.  Speakers consistently returned to the basic need to consult with the field users of solutions.   “From selecting the appropriate device, as Elin Allison from Microsoft mentioned, to actively educating a large workforce like Nick Mountfield from Avis has to: if you don’t directly invest in your workforce at an early stage, then solutions may not fulfil their need,” said Reynolds.

Justin Hobbs of Motorola agreed.  “You need to get users involved in planning from the start, so they can become ambassadors for system.”

Practical implementation guidance included the need to test and scale solutions.  “Small scale pilots of solutions which thoroughly bench-test devices and bespoke solutions are absolutely vital prior to significant rollout, especially when the rollout might concern a fleet of hundreds of vehicles,” continued Reynolds.

British Car Auctions, who operate a number of cross continental vehicle auction operations, demonstrated the need to intelligently scale a regional solution for potential replication across other countries.

Avis, British Car Auctions, G4S, Microsoft, The Mobile Data Association, Morgan Est, Motorola, Quocirca and Vinci were represented at the Mobilise Your Workforce event.  Sessions covered detailed analysis of Near Field Communication technologies, device selection, mobility solution implementation and management tools.