We all use iPhone for quick jobs around the sites and then the desktops for doing job write ups and it works perfectly for us.
We also have a android tablet (a cheap one at that too!) in a tough case that is also spot on. It all depends on how fancy you want to get - we have never had any issues with the actual MaintainX app and any issues has been directly hardware related.
The only issue I have encountered is using the desktop app on my iPhone - the scaling is a little bit off. But on our tablet it works fine - it also allows for full site translation which we are currently trialling out for our South Korean site!
Awesome feedback - thanks for taking the time to provide that, Luke!
Anyone else?
Ooo! I forgot to include this in my bulleted list of questions - do you give your employees a choice for mobile device, or do you just say “We’re using Windows/Apple tablets/phones/etc” and that’s that?
Between two organizations of using MaintainX and trying to provide solutions for myself, technicians, engineers, managers, and operators, I can say with utmost confidence: there’s no perfect solution that will satisfy every technician, location, or organization. There’s a vast range of individual user comfort levels and preference. Each roles’ SOWs also matter a ton. It sounds like your org has a fair amount of flexibility if all these options are viable for you though, so that’s good.
One important thing to point out is that anyone who needs access to reporting won’t be able to access that from the mobile device. Mobile’s strongest features are: ease of access to procedures, swiping through work orders, and scanning barcodes. For most other tasks, the desktop app is superior. Depending on the technician’s duties, mobile will likely be more convenient, but a lot of older techs might struggle with basic navigation and digital concepts.
We’ve issued company phones that only run MaintainX in workstation mode to each tech, but they just collect dust since they’re so bulky that it’s not practical for the technicians to carry them around. The techs mostly prefer to do admin on the office desktops, but use their personal devices to complete procedures and respond to requests. Note: Employees are reimbursed for using personal cell phones for work purposes in CA. At my last org, laptops were issued with choice of Mac or PC and were tracked by IT on some fancy IT software.
I’ve tried going cheap on the android tablet for field inspections- wasn’t worth it. The hardware was so slow that procedures would take forever to fill out. If you go with tablets, don’t go cheap!
Having the mobile app (regardless of device) definitely saves time on field admin since the alternative is writing everything down on a notepad and copying it into digital format later, essentially doing double the work. Being able to access records and manuals is also pretty critical for troubleshooting. Still, some techs dread technology so much that they’ll still use the pen & paper method long after your mobile program has launched and it’ll take all the training in the world to get them to do the bare minimum.
If you’re really unsure, you could always send out a survey and get feedback from the techs themselves!
We tend to lean more towards Apple. From a cybersecurity aspect they are a much safer product as android based operating systems can be open source and can be expensive to buy tablets that are fully locked down (which can cause issues with app restrictions).
Thanks for your response, Mike!! I appreciate all that feedback.
Our org COULD pony up the money for cell phones for our techs - and that would be the ONLY way that any of them would agree to use their personal devices while using them for work - but that would probably add an expense that our group isn’t willing to add to our budget. Even buying them ipad mini’s, protective cases, and Apple pencils would only be a ~$500 one-time expense, and we’d have them available for re-deployment when techs got hired/got done/etc. Paying $25/tech per phone every month would add up quickly.
I’ve been testing the mobile app out using an ipad mini, and I’m pretty happy with it! Any tech that wasn’t comfortable using the mobile app could definitely be trained to use the desktop app; it could be made even simpler using a custom role the minimizes the amount of stuff they can see too, so that’s a non-issue.
FWIW, most of our guys are now “younger,” and have grown up with technology. The last tech we had that used a notepad and pen to record everything he did for the week, then enter it into Maximo at the end, retired last year. lol So we’ve got that going for us - along with all the historical knowledge these techs took with them when they retired, sadly...
