Tab Times

by Stephen Lang, as published by Tab Times

Tekserve, the venerable New York City tech retailer focused on Apple products, hosted a meeting last week designed for tablet users and a handful of neophytes who wanted to get their act together business-wise.

About 90 people braved record-setting heat to hear TekServe CTO Aaron Freimark and his colleagues discuss tablet implementation issues. Amazingly, when asked if they had a strategic deployment plan, nary an attendee raised their hand.

Freimark offered a list of critical must-dos he says every business needs to have in place when embarking on a tablet deployment program.

• Establish a common baseline, at least when starting out. Every tablet you plan to deploy should have at least X amount of storage for example.


• Remember, training is priceless. If workers can’t increase productivity with their new mobile devices than what’s the point?


• Deploy great apps. This goes back to productivity, give workers the tools (apps) they need to maximize the tablet's value. 


• Give the devices your brand. It may read Lenovo on the back but it should have you company brand and logo on the front. Company pride, and all that.


• Enroll in the Apple (or whichever tablet maker you use) volume purchase plan right away. 


• Get your company a Mobile Device Management program. The more devices your company activates, the more you’ll need them.


• Measure progress. What’s working and what isn’t.


• Make certain that you have a help desk for tablets (yes, they’ll need it) and that its employees understand management’s goals.

CTO Freiman added that he believed power is shifting from the IT department to technology users. Tekserve says it's seeing noticeable action on the business side in four categories: sales, field services, business analytics and training.

Apple speaks

In addition to other Tekserve speakers, including CEO Kevin Hart, who welcomed the crowd, Tekserve managed to get an actual Apple employee to speak at the meeting—Drew Tucker, senior systems engineer. While most of what he had to say was boilerplate, he did offer up a couple of tablet deployment success stories, one of which was United Airlines. Since it started deploying tablets the airline reports saving a whopping 18 million sheets of paper a year, he said.