Announcing PHALANX 5: BYOD Meets The Operations App Store

Scotland’s infamous diet is the cause of much Internet banter: “Does the addition of a pickled onion with fish and chips constitute a balanced meal?” Thankfully, this is not a lecture on why we should eat at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day. Rather, this concerns the health of business operations.

Staff equipped with Spartan’s mobile workforce solution Phalanx, enjoy paper-free working, letting Phalanx’s Apps for Operations take care of the information flow. Now these operations are about to receive a health boost thanks to the forthcoming release of Phalanx 5, a major new version of the mobile workforce solution that brings some important enhancements, including the following 5 improvements:

1. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Phalanx mobile users have traditionally been supplied with dedicated industrial handheld devices. Although a dedicated handheld device is still appropriate for some, it is at times a prohibitively expensive option for others. Phalanx 5 provides a new BYOD client that will allow these workers to access Phalanx’s industrial apps on their smartphones or tablets, including those running Android, iOS and Windows. The new client utilises the latest web technologies HTML5 and JavaScript, delivering a great user experience that benefits from location awareness, imaging and RFID integration. Unlike a traditional web app however, Phalanx industrial apps will continue to work, even without a radio signal.

2. Flexible As Paper

Before Phalanx, there was paper. For operations staff, paper can be a hard habit to break. It’s easy to change a form and issue a new one and if there’s no appropriate place for you to record something you, you can always scribble it in the margins. However, we at Spartan have measured the true cost of paper: the data re-entry, the integrity problems and the transcription errors all add up. Just like the consequences of eating fried Mars Bars rather than apples, these costs are almost always hidden and go unnoticed until it’s too late. Phalanx 5 takes paper head on, providing features to make Phalanx apps every bit as flexible as paper. Business logic is no longer translated into computer code, but instead remains as business-friendly process maps, rules and form designs. It’s all under Phalanx’s hood, but it simply means that Phalanx users can get the app changes they want quickly. There’s now no excuse to continue with an unhealthy paper habit.

How is the health of your operations? Give them a dose of Phalanx…

3. Zero Deployment

Your efforts to choose healthy options will suffer if, when you feel peckish, you never have fruit to hand. So it can be with an operative’s use of paper rather than the App that they would be better using, if only their admin colleagues had been able to get it to them. Phalanx 5 gives an organisation the option of using zero-install apps, so that users can always have access to the new or latest versions that they need.

4. Expanded Apps

When it comes to healthy eating, variety is important; for healthy operations, the more paper processes replaced with industrial Apps, the better. Phalanx 5 comes with an expanded range of Apps including Field Service, Stock Count and more.

5. Existing Favourites

As you would expect, all of Phalanx 4’s existing Apps, including the Logistics and Maintenance packs, can continue to be used.

For your continued health, keep getting your 5-a-day, for the health of your operations, consider moving to Phalanx 5.

If you are interested in healthy operations, please visit Spartan’s website for more information.