I’ve written before about how mobile apps are one of a company’s most important keys to digital transformation. A Forbes Insight Study found “43% of executives in organizations with high levels of digitally empowered firstline workers report excellent progress in their digital transformation efforts, versus 21% of executives with few digitally empowered workers.”
A McKinsey & Company report, “The people power of transformations,” mirrors those findings. It concludes, “What really sets the more successful transformations apart…is the involvement of frontline employees and their managers…At successful companies, respondents are much likelier to report visibly engaged frontline employees: 73 percent do, compared with 46 percent of all other respondents.”
The studies are backed up by a Computerworld article, “Making the connection: The role of collaboration apps in digital transformation.” The article is primarily focused on how collaboration tools foster innovation and lead to more successful digital transformations.
But it also spends a good deal of time focusing on how important it is to make sure that frontline workers collaborate in that way as well. It notes, “Much of the focus of digital transformation in recent years has been on office workers. But enterprise software vendors are now targeting collaboration, communication and productivity tools at a wider range of employees, such as retail, manufacturing and healthcare staff. These frontline service and task workers represent a burgeoning area of investment for many organizations.”
The article goes on to point out how with collaboration tools, frontline workers have been able to improve customer service, help customers with purchases, check on stock in real time, and more. Wayne Kurtzman, a research director at IDC, told the magazine, ““We're at the beginning of making every worker a knowledge worker. The collaboration of an enterprise runs much more efficiently the more ideas that are there, the more ideas that can be acted upon.”
Frontline workers are so important for digital transformation that hardware makers, not just software workers, are targeting them with new devices. Samsung, for example, recently introduced a new phone, Galaxy XCover Pro, aimed directly at frontline workers.
Samsung claims the new phone “is built to enable frontline workers to accelerate the adoption of mobile-first vertical solutions for enterprise and SMB customers. As mobility continues to drive business disruption in very positive ways, devices like the Galaxy XCover Pro will deliver new mobile-enabled business solutions for frontline workers…Galaxy XCover Pro is more than just a new device, it’s a new mobile enterprise platform that will empower businesses and their frontline workers to harness mobility to turn any workplace location in to a seamless working environment.”
How to Involve Firstline Workers in Digital Transformation
At Alpha Software, we work every day to digitally transform our customers' business processes. By applying the right application development product to the problem, companies can quickly involve firstline workers and citizen developers in the development process. Alpha TransForm allows firstline workers or business managers to quickly and easily build a mobile app or digitize a paper process. They can test the app in the field, gain end-user user feedback and speed delivery of a mobile app that works well in the field and delivers true digital transformation. Learn more about Alpha TransForm and try it free for 30-days.
Further Reading:
- Related blog post: Want To Speed Up Digital Transformation? Have Frontline Employees Lead The Way.
- Related white paper: Speed Digital TransFormation: Democratize App Development with Citizen Developers
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