Rugged Devices: The Frontier Or The Past For Field Service?

By Aly Pinder Jr., research analyst, service management, Aberdeen Group, www.aberdeen.com

Has the iPad taken over, or is your mobile worker better off with a rugged device?

Grab your mobile phone and take a look at it. Is the screen cracked? Have you had to recently replace your phone because you dropped it on the kitchen floor? I would say the chances are you have had this problem at some point. Now, imagine if you managed 1,000 mobile workers, all with their own devices. How many of these workers will drop their device and break the organization’s investment?

That is the fear of every CFO, CIO, and procurement person with a field service organization. In lieu of this inevitability of a dropped device, especially in challenging work environments, is it worthwhile to roll out consumer- grade mobile devices for technicians? Shouldn’t rugged devices be the de facto standard?