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Energy & Utilities Workforce Technology

Your field employees will have a field day with these mobility strategies

08/11/2022

by Scotty Buoy and Allison Boyce

Companies across industries are recognizing the value in leveraging mobile technology so employees can effectively operate outside of a traditional office and maximize their time in the field. While many businesses prioritize building state-of-the-art customer applications, there are also compelling benefits to investing in the mobile solution for employees who work on the front lines of your organization, including:

• Improved efficiency and employee experience
• Increased accessibility to resources in the field
• Enhanced operational chains of custody and real-time data accuracy

While the advantages are clear, designing an application that enhances complex operational processes is easier said than done. How can you ensure this new application improves the field experience instead of complicating it? Discover the mobility strategies that Sendero leverages when designing and implementing field centric mobile applications below.

Mobility strategies to design an application with the field – for the field

• Align new technology with your organization’s digital strategy. Your organization should have a digital strategy that outlines how all your applications are designed, created, managed, and controlled. Have you considered where this new field app fits into that framework? Which unique problems will this new app solve? Start by developing a long-term roadmap that outlines the major functionality that will be incorporated in each application. This way, you will have a documented mission and purpose that you can use as a framework for evaluating feedback.
• Hear a wide variety of field perspectives. While leadership may have ideas on how to simplify processes, you should lean on subject matter experts with current field experience when gathering requirements and testing.
  • Understand field processes from all angles: Speak with all positions involved in a process flow to account for every role. For example, take a utility company that plans to digitize a material request form. This form is submitted by a field technician and received by a storekeeper who manages inventory. A technician’s priorities are the simplicity and speed of a mobile submission form, but the storekeeper may suggest adding new form fields that would help them process the information more quickly. Do not skip gathering input from all involved to determine the best solution.
  • Learn an employees’ history: As you meet with field employees, take time to understand what their experience with technology has been. This may not be the first time your organization has tried to implement new field technology. It’s important to learn the pain points from previous efforts. Additionally, it’s worthwhile to consider the scale of change this new app will bring and react accordingly. If employees have been using manual paper processes for years, they will likely need (and appreciate) more hands-on support while transitioning to a mobile platform. This step is critical to create a change management strategy well-suited for your audience.
• Account for all paths – not just the happy ones. Field work is highly variable. Factors such as weather, time of year, damaged materials, and so forth can alter a straightforward process. For example, say an app allows employees to scan a barcode to retrieve details about an asset they are using. If the barcode is destroyed due to weather damage, are users able to manually type in the asset number? If their work is interrupted, can they save their in-progress submissions? When meeting with employees to gather application requirements, it’s important to ask the right questions to account for all edge cases.
• Tailor the user interface and user experience to field work. Take full advantage of the freedom that custom solutions offer with personalized interface and experience touches for your workforce. Ensure compatibility with field devices such as tablets, scanners, and styluses. If safety is the highest priority for your organization, offer features such as confirmation pop-ups that prompt employees to review their work before submitting. Enabling push notifications that remind employees to update their status in a workflow may be another useful feature to consider.
• Offer a personalized experience. As is the case with any app, users do not want to see functionality that is not relevant to them. Consider segmenting app features by key user profiles and configuring security permissions based on employee roles. This way, a variety of employees can utilize this app while receiving access to personalized features.

You might think the design phase is the hardest part of a custom app implementation; however, this app won’t do your organization much good if no one uses it.

Implement a successful mobile rollout approach for field adoption

Training Best Practices:

• Start with a pilot launch. You only get one chance at a first impression with users, and their time is limited. A pilot period with a representative sample of users is a risk-averse way to test an app in production and incorporate critical feedback before rolling it out enterprise-wide.
• Keep communications clear and concise. Remember that employees may read your communications while at work in the field. At a glance, they should be able to understand what action is required of them and the app’s key benefits. Get field leadership involved to reiterate important dates and stay connected with employees throughout the rollout. To minimize emails, create a channel such as a monthly newsletter to broadcast important app updates, new features, and trainings.
• Leverage change champions. During trainings, call upon users from user acceptance testing or a pilot to provide tangible examples of how the app has benefited them. Employees are more likely to trust testimony from peers they know and respect who work alongside them in the field.
• Encourage two-way learning. Establish that while your training team members are experts on how to use this app, field employees are the experts on how to do their job – this tool simply enables them to do that. You will gather better feedback if you learn the why behind every use case, not just the how. Two-way learning ensures you are talking with not at field employees in a mutually beneficial conversation.

Feedback Best Practices:

• Gain consensus. Everyone does their job a little differently and has unique preferences. Resolve any conflicting feedback and record the frequency of recurring requests to capture demand for enhancements. Establishing a clear consensus will make prioritization easier, especially in a large organization.
• Secure quick wins. Thinking too “big picture” can be harmful in an agile rollout. Quickly address small bugs or enhancements that are disproportionate blockers to adoption. For example, a toggle button in a submission form is not very clickable because it is too small, and you receive complaints about it daily. Utilization decreases as a result. Responding rapidly to minor UI pain points keeps employees engaged while you continue developing long-term enhancements.
• Provide 24/7 feedback channels. Field work continues around the clock, and employees must be able to reach someone if they need help on the job. Consider offering support such as in-person office hours, a phone hotline, an email inbox, or an in-app feedback form. Equip your organization’s technology support team to troubleshoot common technical issues users may experience.

To implement a custom mobile application the field will love, you must keep field employees at the center of your design, development, testing, and training activities.

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At Sendero, we’ve helped a variety of companies develop custom mobile solutions and have discovered the insights and best practices needed to implement effective mobility strategies. Fill out the form below to connect with one of our consultants today.

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