Energy utility enterprises can improve usability of their SharePoint repositories while still adhering to strict compliance requirements.

In today’s energy and utility industries, enterprises can improve usability of their SharePoint repositories while still adhering to strict compliance requirements. Field technicians are responsible for a variety of tasks often carried out in extreme and hazardous conditions.  These include the installation, monitoring and servicing of equipment, ensuring safety in accordance with current specs, data, standards and procedures.  In an industry where safety and reliability are mantras, all of this must be accomplished under the purview of ensuring operating, environmental, and regulatory compliance.  Further exacerbating the challenges, many of these tasks are performed beyond the footprint of wireless networks.

 

Given that SharePoint was originally designed for a desktop-based environment, the capacity to natively automate syncing, updating, and sharing of documents on mobile devices while severed from the server is highly limited.  Employees of utilities therefore often employ workarounds to bridge this gap.  However, practices of this type—including email-based file transfers, use of unsanctioned online storage services, and portable flash drives—significantly undermine enterprise data security protocols. The net trade-off in this dynamic is employee productivity versus corporate control.

 

Rather than further hardening systems to restrict access, utilities must embrace worker mobility, and recognize that transforming their IT systems towards facilitating collaborative efforts is, as Gartner says, a source of competitive advantage. Organizations must also recognize the value in their current SharePoint-based knowledge management systems, and leverage those that already exist, rather than seeking to re-engineer from scratch.

 

Such adaptation means balancing the consumerised technology requirements that employees want with enforcing compliance via process adoption monitoring—for example, ensuring that the latest material specifications are easily available for field teams to access, and ensuring that they have been delivered to the field in accordance with corporate policy. Ultimately, it’s this balance that drives process uptake and keeps people safe.

 

Colligo Engage is uniquely positioned to bridge this gap. By extending remote access to existing SharePoint repositories through intuitively-designed iOS and Android apps, field workers are able to access the right content at the right time. Through Colligo’s Console, managers are also able to confirm that employees’ mobile devices have downloaded relevant and timely safety documents, while also being able to review usage logs. Critical information is distributed, but still protected within the organization’s walled garden. Implementation is straight forward, and can be completed in a matter of days. Budgets remain intact, IT improves governance and reduces administration, and users are able to access the information necessary to efficiently complete their tasks. Everybody wins.

 

See for yourself how Colligo Engage can enhance your mobile workforce by starting fast today with five free licenses.

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