For the past decade or more, the need to keep workers connected has been the driving force for businesses to adopt creative mobility solutions. From warehouse workers and delivery drivers to retail sales associates and healthcare staff, just about everyone is using mobile devices to access data, monitor workflows, and collaborate with others.
The proliferation of mobile devices doesn’t come cheap, however, especially when you’re outfitting a large share of your workforce. The cost equation has some decision-makers wondering if they can get by with consumer devices, which usually have a lower up-front cost, rather than enterprise-grade devices.
We are strong supporters of enterprise-grade devices for workplace applications simply because we’ve seen over and over how the total cost of ownership (TCO) is significantly lower over the long term. From durability to security to easier device management, the extra up-front investment pays off over time. While there is a higher up-front cost, savings are experienced over the life of the products due to less breakage, less user downtime and minimal IT personnel involvement.
This is especially true when you consider Zebra’s lineup of ET4X Series, Android rugged tablets, which deliver enterprise-grade benefits at a value price point that makes it feasible to deploy them across a wide segment of workforce uses. Whether your applications call for the Wi-Fi only ET40 or the Wi-Fi/cellular ET45, you’ll have a choice of 8-inch or 10-inch screen sizes in a right-priced enterprise tablet that’s built for business.
Here are just four of the things that make Zebra’s ET4X lineup a better investment for business use than any consumer device:
Durability
Zebra’s ET4X tablets are rugged right out of the box, requiring no additional protection to withstand the handling that you must account for in workforce applications. They feature IP65 sealing for protection against dust and moisture, and they’re rated for 4-foot drops to concrete. To get anything approaching that level of drop protection in a consumer device, you’ll need to add a rugged boot at an additional cost.
Integrated Barcode Scanning
From retail to healthcare, many business workflows are streamlined with barcoding technology, but those benefits are hard to capture if your workers’ mobile devices offer only faulty camera-based scanning. Zebra’s ET4X tablets offer three integrated 2D scanner options—engineered by the experts in barcode technology—for optimal scanning performance with no added investment in bulky third-party scanning sleds or additional software licenses.
Longer Hardware Lifecycle
With consumer-level mobile devices, obsolescence is inevitable, with upgrades coming as frequently as every nine months. That spells disaster for workforce deployment: within just a few years, you’ll have several different models in use, creating major device management headaches. Zebra’s rugged enterprise tablets are engineered for a lifecycle that stretches at least 6 years, with complete support and security upgrades throughout, making them far easier for your IT staff to support and giving your workers a consistent experience from shift to shift.
Power Management and Battery Performance
The battery is one area where enterprise-grade devices usually separate themselves from consumer devices, and Zebra’s ET4X rugged tablets are no exception. In the standard configuration, both the ET40 and ET45 deliver full-shift battery performance, and an optional hot-swappable battery is available for even more power management flexibility. And note that Zebra’s devices feature user-replaceable batteries, so you won’t be stuck with the declining battery performance that’s common with aging consumer devices.
For more than 20 years, the Glacier team has offered the very best rugged computing solutions for the data collection marketplace. Zebra is a premier Glacier partner with solutions for every challenging application. Please contact your Glacier sales rep for more information at http://glaciercomputer.com or call 866-724-6257.