Across a variety of organizations, the changing seasons and related seasonal work issues highlight all the ways that end-user computing (EUC) technology is important for dealing with busy periods and changes throughout the year.
Examples exist across multiple industries, including retail, finance, and hospitality. These use cases involve the whole range of EUC technologies, including unified endpoint management, digital employee experience, and virtual apps and desktops.
End-user computing in retail
December is the busiest month of the year for many retail stores, with customer volume and employee staffing at their highest levels. For stores, delivery companies, and warehouses that rely on frontline employees with handheld devices for scanning, point of sale, inventory, and other tasks, it’s essential to have all their devices in top shape. This means making sure devices are up to date (and that updates don’t get pushed out during working hours), batteries are healthy, and all devices are accounted for at the end of the shift. Lost or out-of-service devices mean downtime and productivity losses that businesses can’t afford during any time of year.
We hear these stories all the time. An employee might take home “the one with the good battery,” even though they’re not supposed to, because they don’t want to struggle with a poorly performing device on their shift. Or a device may get set down somewhere on the shop floor because it was waiting for an update. The next thing you know, grabbing a mobile point-of-sale device becomes a bottleneck that slows down transactions. Regional store managers are calling corporate IT, demanding a fix for their device issues. How does IT respond?
These frontline use cases are some of the exact scenarios that Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) and Workspace ONE Intelligence are designed for. Having fine-grained control over the management of frontline devices, combined with visibility into performance metrics and powerful analytics, can help retail fleets operate in top shape.
Adding the Frontline solution pack to Workspace ONE gives IT admins the ability to monitor device check-in/check-out, giving accountability back to the employee for returning devices and eliminating lost/stolen device counts. Workspace ONE Assist remote support in unattended mode provides IT the ability to fix devices that aren’t functioning properly without requiring a store manager to intervene.
Many seasonal businesses depend on custom mobile apps for critical, revenue-generating functions. With proactive alerting for anomalies in these critical app flows, organizations can reduce the response time for incidents in these highly important applications. This holistic approach with Workspace ONE provides peace of mind in these busy seasons that your critical technology is performing optimally and powering your business.
Financial services and virtual desktops
For some financial organizations, the beginning of every calendar year means hiring hundreds of temporary workers to process tax returns. These workers all need access to the latest versions of accounting software, and of course it all has to be compliant with regulations. You want everyone to access a consistent environment, but how do you get all of this without maintaining and shipping out a massive fleet of loaner laptops?
Horizon virtual desktops, combined with apps managed by App Volumes, can be the answer. Organizations can scale out desktop capacity in the cloud of their choice, including private on-premises data centers, deliver the latest versions of applications, and then put in various DLP controls through the Horizon Client and by using Dynamic Environment Manager. Once tax season is over and temporary workers are no longer needed, IT can quickly scale back to their original VDI capacity or completely discard the temporary virtual desktops they had set up.
More seasonal UEM and BYO use cases
For hospitality businesses, preparing for peak travel seasons could mean doing upgrades across far-flung properties. Maybe that means upgrading point-of-sale or front desk machines. Or it could mean rolling out a new fleet of tablets for concierge staff. Again, these tasks are all second nature when using a product like Workspace ONE UEM.
Even for office-based employees with more consistent year-round work patterns, the end-of-year holidays can mean more BYO devices showing up thanks to Black Friday discounts, or folks taking a quick look at work projects from personal tablets because they didn’t bring their work laptop on a trip. For IT, this means having the right options in place for unmanaged devices. Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub gives employees access to any app or service on any device to ensure continuity in their work experience. The Anywhere Workspace platform can supply a range of options, from virtual desktops to productivity apps, to conditional access controls and multi-factor authentication.
The seasonal work challenge solution: Anywhere Workspace
It’s likely that your organization experiences seasonal work changes that could benefit from a modern, unified end-user computing platform. Whether you’re looking for a leading-edge solution to tackle a key use case or you want the flexibility to have a platform that can handle just about any scenario that pops up, Anywhere Workspace solutions can help.
