Field notes · Manufacturing
Field-force automation at scale: lessons from 6,500 tablets
Equipping a sales force across 2,500 distribution points is less about the tablet and more about everything around it.
For a beverages company, we automated a field force of more than 6,500 tablets working across over 2,500 distribution points, and added a warehouse management solution behind it. The project taught us that the tablet is the easy part.
Every device ready on day one
A salesperson who receives a tablet that needs setting up loses a day of selling, and often calls a helpdesk that is already busy. We stage every device centrally: enrolled in mobile device management, loaded with the right apps, tested and labelled for the person who will use it.
Device, app and data as one system
Field-force projects often treat hardware, software and data as separate contracts. When something goes wrong, nobody owns the problem. We integrate MDM, the sales application and the data flows together, so that orders taken in the field reach the warehouse and the reporting systems without manual steps.
Plan for the second year
Tablets in the field are dropped, lost and worn out. The project plan should include spares, repair turnaround and a refresh cycle, with trade-in for old devices. Our mobility programmes include trade-in and accidental damage protection for this reason.
What to measure
- Days from joining to a working device, for new salespeople.
- Devices out of service at any time, and for how long.
- Orders captured on the device versus on paper.
Those three numbers tell you whether the programme is working far better than the number of tablets shipped.