MDM Strategies: Turn Emergency Decisions Into Coherent Long-Term Success

Guest blog from our friends and partners at 42Gears. Thank you from the Mainstreet team!

How do you pull together a dozen short-term plans into a long-term strategy after the fact?

As technology executives take stock of the choices they made during the pandemic, this is a key question that has emerged. Finding an work smarter not harder answer is the difference between surviving and succeeding in the years to come.

IT executives need to find ways to work smarter, not harder. As a result, they must adopt more efficient ways of managing devices and resolving problems. This is where MDM strategies come into play. Choosing the right MDM (mobile device management) solution, one that can support devices from various manufacturers, is key to transforming short-term emergency management into highly effective long-term strategies.

How We Got Here

If the pandemic sent a message, that message was clear. With the rise of curbside and contactless retail, employees urgently needed mobile devices to coordinate and navigate through a challenging environment. There was no time to consider how these devices aligned with a long-term strategy – every day of deliberation gave competitors a chance to get the first foothold in this new market.

Even now, the retail industry is far from stable. Just when IT executives think things might get better, new challenges emerge. This is to say nothing of COVID-19 variants, which threaten to completely shut down in-person retail once again.

Another unfortunate reality is that devices are always aging, whether or not they are being used. You will either discover a device is aging before it malfunctions, or after. Businesses can only handle device aging if they can monitor device health and catch signs of wear and tear before the devices break completely.

Since many companies purchased each wave of technology separately, it is likely tempting to manage them separately as well. Unfortunately, trying to manage every type of device on its own is inadvisable, if not impossible, across retail outlets and supply chains. It’s inefficient, for one, but it will also obscure higher-level patterns and trends. Eventually, in order to reach acceptable levels of efficiency, you’ll need to have a single pane of glass to manage everything your company owns.

The Need for Something Beyond Standard MDM Software

IT executives often rely on MDM strategies that provide a single pane of glass, but this normally works best only for companies with limited device diversity. If a company relies on a single device model, then their MDM solution only needs to work well with that model. After a pandemic’s worth of acquiring new devices, however, such narrowly-focused MDMs are likely insufficient.

To be clear, there’s no shame in having many device types in your business. Device diversity is not a bad thing; in fact, it’s quite helpful! Still, in order to turn short-term planning into long-term success, you need MDM strategies that can manage every device you have at your disposal. These include wearables, rugged devices, IoT devices, and other devices you may have, or could need in the future, such as VR headsets. Many businesses will soon demand VR headsets, which enable contactless training, ideal for safely scaling up a workforce.

Monitoring device health from a single, central location makes it much more likely admins will spot device warning signs. This is crucial because so many device issues are avoidable. By identifying tell-tale signs of looming device issues, admins can give devices a tune-up so they never break down. Plus, many malfunctions are not caused by the device breaking down, but by procedural errors. For example, a prematurely-drained battery could point to an aging device with suboptimal battery life… or it could simply represent someone forgetting to charge the device at night. If the latter is true, mandating better policies can give devices a new lease on life.

SureMDM by 42Gears is designed to be the universal “single pane of glass” that many businesses need so badly. On top of phones and computers, SureMDM manages VR headsets, wearables, and Internet of Things devices. 42Gears uses proprietary Things Management Technology to connect IoT devices to the SureMDM console for easy monitoring. This even includes printers, battery scanners, and other important peripherals built without IoT in mind. 42Gears has also developed partnerships with all kinds of device manufacturers, especially those specializing in frontline environments. This way, SureMDM works well across a wide range of frontline-focused devices that retail firms likely own.

Unified Management Strategies

While smart on-the-fly decision making was a key part of surviving the pandemic, you’ll need to balance it out with long-term planning as well. This is why MDM strategies that support a wide range of device types, like SureMDM by 42Gears, is so important.

A unified management strategy can give you a competitive edge, when many of your competitors continue to struggle with device diversity. Managing every device from a single pane of glass lets you enjoy the benefits of a diverse fleet (such as less dependence on any specific OEM) without the downsides (such as inefficient and time-consuming management).

By choosing SureMDM in conjunction with Mainstreet, you can make a sustainable long-term strategy from whatever your short-term decision-making has given you. We will help you get more mileage out of your mobility investments and help you keep them up and running effectively for as long as you need.

Turn Emergency Decisions Into Coherent Long-Term Success with Mainstreet and 42Gears. Our team would love to hear from you!