Rugged Computing Advances To Meet The Evolving Needs Of Field Workers

By Patrick Seidensticker, director, Dell Rugged Mobility, Dell Rugged, www.dell.com/rugged

Beware taking a one-size-fits-all approach to arming your field workers with mobile devices to help them perform their jobs better.

The roles and expectations of today’s field workers are a vast departure from what they were just a decade ago. It’s no longer permissible for workers to collect data in the field and input their research into a system when they get back to the office. To maintain competitive productivity, organizations expect real-time computing from their field workers; it doesn’t matter if they are working outside of the comforts of an office.

Furthermore, the computing tasks field workers depend on to complete their day-to-day job duties are far more complex than in the past. From high-end computer-aided-design (CAD) imaging software to inventory control and management activities, modern field computing tasks reflect the fact that field workers are increasingly becoming content creators instead of merely consumers. They need technology that enables that complex content creation in the field. The bottom line is that more is expected of field workers than ever before, including intense computing done in the field in real time.