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Mobility and Collaboration in the Cloud: Key Takeaways

The IT professionals at G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. in Columbus, Ohio support some 1,200 mobile workers, using Microsoft Azure Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) to keep the heterogeneous device fleet updated and protected. Here are five key lessons that G&J's IT team has learned from its experience with cloud-based mobile device management.
By Michael Steinhart, Contributor
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1 of 5 Michael Steinhart/ZDNET

Add sales and education to your skillset

Eric McKinney, Cloud Services Manager at G&J Pepsi, explained that the most important element of a cloud rollout is hitting the road to talk to employees about the changes and how their work will be affected. Take the time to answer questions and demonstrate benefits, he said, and you'll achieve buy-in and successful adoption.

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Standardize, simplify, and integrate

Many companies will invest in separate point solutions for mobile device management, single sign-on, and productivity. This approach leads to unnecessary cost and complexity, McKinney explained. Microsoft Cloud Services delivers a centralized system that covers user management, authentication, software licenses, and mobile and desktop devices across multiple vendors.

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Empower non-IT people

Using Microsoft Intune to create user groups and device profiles, Business Application Manager Nate Foster set up an onboarding and provisioning playbook, then taught administrative staff how to use it. Now the routine tasks of provisioning and deprovisioning devices can be handled by non-technical staff.

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Share wins with management

"Management doesn't care about server deployments," McKinney said. "They want to hear that you saved X hours and X dollars." This communication technique is key when IT professionals are trying to secure buy-in from decision-makers on the business side.

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5 of 5 Michael Steinhart/ZDNET

Build on success and extend services

Having a workforce of 1,200 mobile employees equipped with smartphones opened up new opportunities for G&J. Director of IT Dan Foster and Eric McKinney built custom applications using Microsoft PowerApps and Power BI that their drivers and merchandisers use to audit product displays at the various stores they service. The resulting data is valuable not only to G&J but to other food suppliers, which creates a new revenue stream for data services built on Microsoft Azure.

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