Field workers and frontline teams are adopting mobile devices instead of relying on traditional dedicated devices — in pursuit of mobility coupled with heightened functionality. But, with so many functions and applications, without the right controls, smartphones can detract from productivity rather than helping teams increase their efficiency.

How can you be sure that new devices won’t act up or power off when they’re needed most? Or that they’re easy enough to use that your field team wastes no time navigating their devices?

Samsung Knox can help you make this transition seamless, while ensuring greater device uptime and control.

Samsung Knox makes devices a better fit for the frontline

With Knox solutions, you can transform generic Samsung smartphones and tablets into specifically tailored, powerful frontline devices, foregoing heavy and expensive options, while keeping the field-optimized UX.

This customization can be applied easily via central deployment, with full support even in offline environments. Backed by Samsung’s unique hardware-level management features, this helps build the foundations for better performance of both field and IT teams.

Let’s take a look at how Knox helps in various frontline scenarios.

1. Putting the innovation in inventory management and retail

Warehouse work and inventory management both present unique challenges, including the need for instant scanning, portability and on-the-spot performance. With Knox, your teams don’t have to take off their work gloves and tumble through pages of apps to launch what they need.

As an IT admin, you can simply remap the hardware keys so that they fire up the most relevant apps in an instant. These can be applied remotely to all your work devices, right from your web console. This way your field team can scan away with little-to-no loss of company time.

What’s more, if you use Knox Capture — Samsung’s own enterprise-grade scanning solution for mobile devices – the camera launches instantly and is already fine-tuned by our engineers to work best as a scanner. The hardware integration triggers faster camera boot-up, and immediately auto-focuses to a fit-to-scan distance.

There are many configuration options in Knox Capture, so IT admins can deploy the best scanning setting for each field team. For warehouse teams, the scanner can be preset to multi-scan mode, so all barcodes on stacked boxes are captured to an app right away. Whereas at point of sale, retail workers might use the same device but with their scanner mode set to one-by-one input.

2. Making sure your team’s vehicles are on track

Another key frontline challenge lies in transportation and tracking. With Knox Manage’s robust management features, fit for frontline use, you can ensure that drivers are on track and well supported at every stage of the journey.

With location tracking and reporting capability, it’s easy to have total oversight and see if drivers are sticking to the designated route, or when they’re delayed.

Then, when the device is on the road, the granular policies and event-based triggers can ensure the devices are used safely and productively. Kiosk mode, or single-/multi-app mode, is a feature that locks the device to only run select apps – for example, only your company map app, and no games or media players. So, there’s no distractions on the phone to help ensure driver safety. With geo-fencing, this restriction can be automatically applied only while travelling. If your team is on the move, time-fencing can be used to similar effect and network-dependent options can only trigger policies when they’re connected to a specific Wi-Fi network.

If the drivers run into a technical difficulty, you don’t have to worry about having to physically pick-up the device or try to explain their options via payphone. The Remote Support tool, included in Knox Manage, allows hands-on troubleshooting to easily resolve the issue no matter where they are.  

3. The IT admin’s work: setup and power up

Knox brings you – as an IT admin – the following advantages:

• Let’s start with setting up. With Knox Mobile Enrollment, IT workers can seamlessly provision work devices not only from a web console, but also from a PC application – without network connection. Any resource your company keeps on-premises for productivity or security can be fully utilized without compromise.

• When time passes and new OS updates roll out, Knox E-FOTA allows you to control exactly when your devices are updated, and to which exact version. Your company apps can be fully tested for compatibility, and there will be no unnecessary interruptions during work hours.

• And, to really make sure your fleet is operating with the right functional insight, Knox Asset Intelligence provides you with in-depth analytics covering battery, application, network and more. For example, track down the app that’s draining battery the most for next action. Find out when it’s the best time to clock-off and dock the devices so they’re fully operational when needed in action. You’ll also recognize which devices’ batteries are getting old so you can plan ahead when it comes to asset management.

Function smarter on the frontline

Every function on the frontline has specific requirements for greater mobility, technical connectivity, device management and functionality. With Samsung’s array of Knox solutions for Frontline, you’re better supported in identifying these needs and subsequently able to streamline every process—from production to delivery.

Utilize existing devices, tailor them to your specific needs and get support along the way. Transform our devices, and your business, with this powerful frontline capability — directly from Samsung. Learn more about the full complement of Knox solutions available for Samsung devices here.