How En­ter­prises Can Ben­e­fit

Arabnet - The Quarterly - - Technology -

Let us count the ways: 1. More ef­fi­ciency across the board In ad­di­tion to the ba­sic “pas­sive” ap­pli­ca­tions men­tioned above (mon­i­tor­ing and ac­cess), wear­ables can boost em­ployee ef­fi­ciency by giv­ing them ac­cess to data in real time, while keep­ing their hands free to han­dle tools or equip­ment. For ex­am­ple, wear­ables like smart glasses can en­able video-as­sisted col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween co-work­ers in dif­fer­ent de­part­ments or lo­ca­tions. This al­lows af­ford­able and ac­cu­rate real-time coach­ing, re­sult­ing in economies of time, trans­porta­tion, and lo­gis­tics. Such an ap­pli­ca­tion could also be ex­tended to cus­tomers who have their own wear­ables, to pro­vide them with more ef­fi­cient after­sales ser­vices such as in­stal­la­tion, trou­bleshoot­ing, and up­grad­ing in­struc­tions.

On the im­ple­men­ta­tion level, en­ter­prises will need to de­velop cer­tain strate­gies to en­sure the right devices are used for the right pur­poses. This in­volves pri­or­i­tiz­ing and ex­tend­ing Wi-fi net­work cov­er­age to en­sure con­nec­tiv­ity for re­mote work­ers.

The other side of the coin is that em­ploy­ees might have pri­vacy con­cerns when it comes to be­ing mon­i­tored through devices, which might dampen their en­thu­si­asm. This is­sue needs to be ad­dressed early on and trans­par­ently to en­sure a smooth im­ple­men­ta­tion and buy-in.

2. Wear­ables-gen­er­ated data The uni­verse of cus­tomer data – whether it comes from mar­ket­ing, sales, cus­tomer ser­vice in­ter­ac­tions, or web/app an­a­lyt­ics – is ex­pand­ing minute by minute. With the com­ing of wear­ables, avail­able data will in­crease ex­po­nen­tially and con­stantly. Wear­ables-gen­er­ated data will have a high im­pact in help­ing en­ter­prises make in­formed de­ci­sions in real time. For­ward-think­ing com­pa­nies be­lieve that the in­flux of in­for­ma­tion will re­shape the busi­ness world by cre­at­ing new tech­nolo­gies, ser­vices, and even en­tirely new in­dus­tries.

For now, the use of wear­able tech data is still in its in­fancy. Ac­cord­ing to the Sales­force re­port, only 8% of early adopters say they are fully ready to gain ac­tion­able in­sights from em­ployee and cus­tomer data gen­er­ated from wear­ables. With the next gen­er­a­tion of wear­ables like Ap­ple Watch hit­ting the mar­ket, there will be an­other layer of data to the ta­ble, mak­ing it more im­por­tant than ever for busi­nesses to de­velop ac­tion-ori­ented strate­gies.

3. A sup­port­ing app ecosys­tem As the app ecosys­tem ma­tures, there will be more busi­ness ap­pli­ca­tions and more so­phis­ti­cated mul­ti­task­ing devices. Many of the re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the sec­tor have come from star­tups and smaller com­pa­nies. But they are not alone any­more. Adopters of wear­ables – both in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­ra­tions – are ven­tur­ing into this ter­ri­tory on their own. In fact, key play­ers have be­gun fo­cus­ing on plat­forms such as Google’s An­droid Wear, Sam­sung’s SAMI data ar­chi­tec­ture, or In­tel’s Edi­son de­sign plat­form, pro­vid­ing the right en­vi­ron­ment for more po­ten­tial stake­hold­ers to pop­u­late the sec­tor with apps. As wear­ables and their apps flood mar­kets, it will be­come eas­ier, and more af­ford­able for com­pa­nies to adopt and cus­tom­ize wear­ables for their needs.

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