I push my phone hard. I manage several business verticals within Western Mobile + Office, and like most business owners I spent the first few years being the main contact for most of our key customers. Even though I have a strong support team who know`s their stuff, those same key contacts only want to deal with me. The bottom line: I need to access my business information anytime, anywhere. Are you in the same boat?
Let me draw out the path most of us take to "mobility enlightenment", and hopefully by the end of this blog you'll see how you can do more, with less.. and save some money as well.
You may still be at the first step of the mobile information journey...your good 'ol laptop. Big screen, keyboard, all your stuff easily accessible, but it's not all it's cracked up to be is it? You need a physical location with WiFi to use it, plan for a short battery life -- and accept that it's actually a piece of luggage.
Then you move on because the iPad you got for Christmas is looking pretty good now. It's light, easy to pack, full of cool apps, games and Facetime. Unfortunately, it's still a second device to carry around, you're bound by the same connectivity challenges as the laptop unless you dug deep and got one with 4G/LTE connectivity...and that's another monthly charge.
In the meantime, you've also gotten pretty comfortable with your smartphone and have discovered how easy it is to integrate many of your business functions on it thanks to cloud based storage apps like Dropbox, Office 360 and Google Docs. Plus, you like the freedom of a one-device mobile office. However, your eyes aren't getting any younger, and it becomes clear that a 4 inch screen is NOT conducive to extended viewing of web pages, documents or data intensive applications.
The good news is, you're close. Real close. And you're due for a phone upgrade soon. The skies open, a rainbow appears, and your journey is almost at an end!
Welcome to phablet-land, where food tastes better, the grass is greener and you feel about five pounds lighter - mostly because you've left your laptop behind! The pictures in this post are of my daily driver - the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge. To be honest, it took me a good month to get used to the size but now I can fully articulate the strongest value statement - my phablet makes life EASIER and I haven't looked back.
To expand, the obvious statement is that I only have to carry one device. Not only that, I totally underestimated the impact of being able to access and complete tasks as they come up... quickly and often without breaking stride from anything else I'm doing.
Rather than listing stats, I will give you one real life example from last month with the understanding that there were some "Samsung Only" features illustrated:
While on a conference call I was also able to view the corresponding video presentation, at the same time responding to a text about a customer billing inquiry from my store manager. Then, using a split screen - I accessed our web-based POS System, retrieved an invoice, initialed a change with my SPen (a Samsung feature) and emailed it to the customer in question - while standing and waiting for the SkyTrain at YVR!
So, my non-phablet using friends, how would you have dealt with that situation?
I leave you with this: When it comes to mobile business, bigger is better and one device is definitely better than two, any day.
Ready to join the "More with Less" revolution? Come on down to TMS Wireless Solutions and let me show off for you!
