Asset management in every location

Device selection for mobile asset management

One of the choices in mobile asset management is which type of device you use. Is a laptop useful or a tablet or mobile phone? That depends on the type of work and the people who do it. When inspecting installations on location, a tablet with a solution for field services management is useful, for example. Your employees can easily make notes and keep a logbook on it. But for repair work, your mechanics probably only need a mobile phone to tick off activities and material consumption. While the people in your warehouse mainly benefit from a device with a barcode or QR scanner to quickly register incoming and outgoing goods.

Your infrastructure also plays a role in your hardware choice. Are you going for iOS, Android or Windows devices? What can you support?

App or extension of existing asset management solution

There are also different variants in applications for mobile asset management. At Gemba, for example, we offer you a ‘mobile extension’ of your existing IBM Maximo solution. That is IBM Maximo Everyplace, which you can use without additional license costs. But you can also opt for the mobile apps IBM Anywhere or EzMaxMobile. If those do not meet your needs, we can even develop a customized app for you. The best solution for your company is determined by various factors. Consider things such as development speed, costs, security and ease of management and use.

Important questions

For example, do you want a working solution for asset management within a month and at a low cost? Do you have 100 mechanics and do you want to distribute a field management services app from your company’s app store and have it updated automatically? Or do you opt for manual installation and management because this is perfectly feasible with 10 mobile workers? The security requirements that the solution must meet are also important. In addition to the data on your employees’ mobile devices being encrypted, it is important that they connect to your underlying systems in a secure manner. Is a VPN the solution or is authentication required? And in what form? Your employees must of course also be able to easily use the mobile asset management solution.

Proof of concept mobile asset management

Fortunately, you do not have to answer all these kinds of questions in advance. User-friendliness, for example, is essential for the acceptance of your solution for mobile asset management. But it is a concept that everyone interprets in their own way. You can therefore best experience this aspect in practice. That is why we at Gemba like to work with a ‘proof of concept’. On the basis of this, you can quickly discover what the best solution for mobile asset management is for your business case.