Companies Make Tech Investment to Support a Distributed Workforce
A distributed workforce, which is defined by tech solutions provider SOTI as “businesses with multiple employees working in varied locations,” includes workers and managers working in remote offices, satellite stations and hybrid work models.
And while it emerged during the pandemic, businesses are leveraging a distributed workforce model to address sourcing issues and supply chain inefficiencies as well as e-commerce hiccups. To make it work, companies are making big investments in various technologies.
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In SOTI’s latest poll of 2,500 IT professionals, the firm found 48 percent of U.S. companies “have increased the number of devices deployed across operations in the last 12 months,” while about 46 percent of respondents said they’ve seen an increase in the mix of device types — from smartphones and scanners to rugged handsets and mobile computers.
SOTI said 76 percent of respondents said they had increased “in either the number of people in the IT team or IT budget in the last 12 months.”
Authors of the report, titled “When Work Is Anywhere: Managing Technology’s Role in the Distributed Workforce,” noted that 98 percent of those polled said one or more of their IT solutions were managed in-house, while 92 percent said one or more were outsourced. It’s typical for businesses to have 30 or more applications in use.
Regarding devices, 79 percent of respondents said they can track any device remotely or on-premises.
The report’s authors also found that bespoke applications “are the new norm as organizations seek innovative ways to manage workflows and onboard employees. Smartphones were the most common device to be managed in-house over the last year at 28 percent, compared to SaaS apps, which only 19 percent of companies manage in-house.” This may also explain why companies are hiring more IT professionals — likely ones who have experience with bespoke apps and in-house tech management.
Remarkably, not all of the workflow processes were found to be digital. Despite the investments in technology, many companies are still doing things the old-fashioned way. “Paper-based processes are still used frequently in large corporations worldwide,” the report stated. “In fact, 31 percent of all manual workflows over the last year were done on paper. Meanwhile, 44 percent are managed via email, confirming that a substantial number of organizations still conduct business through unsecured, non-digitized methods.”
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