As we here in the U.S. celebrate Thanksgiving, I thought it was only fitting to say “thank you” to all our incredible customers. We shared some incredible, really innovative customer success stories this year. So, in honor of the thankfulness season, here are seven AirWatch customers and innovative mobility stories we’re thankful for this year.
1. Hackensack Meridian Health
Hackensack Meridian Health’s mobile deployment “was pretty tough to begin with,” said Timothy Pan, senior security and network administrator. “We chose another solution which didn’t work well. We quickly switched to AirWatch, which makes things much easier.”
One of their use cases is mobile scheduling for patient escorts, the people who move patients in wheelchairs all over the hospital. The workers no longer have to search around for a piece of paper that tells them who to pick up and where they are. They pull out their phones, and everything is there. Pan said he worked closely with AirWatch on the design for a MyChart app that patients use to track their appointments, medications, hospital discharge instructions and more.
“The API that AirWatch provided, it’s so great … as soon as we get a discharge from Epic (electronic medical records system), it will automatically send an API call to reset the device. It makes things streamlined.”
Hackensack Meridian is piloting a program that extends their current AirWatch and VMware technology to eliminate paper entirely, and Pan says it is going well.
2. Sprint
Sprint chose AirWatch and Horizon Air to bring more mobility to its retail stores and employees. Using AirWatch, Sprint manages 28,000 mobile devices and 50 apps with only four people.
Sprint deployed AirWatch to over 1,100 stores and 3,000 devices in two weeks. With this innovative mobility solution, retail stores reduced transaction times by 30% when associates used AirWatch-managed tablets to get out from behind point of sale terminals and onto the sales floor with customers.
[Related: Sprint Manages 25,000 Mobile Devices with Only 4 People & Other Amazing Feats of Mobility]
3. Scotiabank
Scotiabank is a Canadian-based international bank with 85,000 employees globally and operations in 55 countries. Like many large financial institutions, Scotiabank was primarily a BlackBerry shop. When iPhones became popular, the bank began to roll out Good for iOS, which satisfied the bank’s security team but:
“We knew it wasn’t a long-term solution. People didn’t like the look and feel of the way Good operates,” said Andrew Bell, senior enterprise infrastructure services consultant.
From Canada to South America, Scotiabank “is using a single instance of AirWatch in the cloud to manage everything globally,” said Bell. Bell also noted that AirWatch servers are “rock solid” and the bank hasn’t had a single security breach under AirWatch management.
“I feel we absolutely made the right choice selecting AirWatch. History has shown that was the correct technical decision. The company has just continued to grow, maintain your position in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant in the upper right-hand corner. If you’re evaluating an MDM (mobile device management) product, you have to take a very serious look at AirWatch.”
4. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA)
Like many companies, CHOA started its mobile journey with secure employee access to email, calendar and contacts. Now, the hospital is rolling out a number of mobile apps managed by AirWatch. Haiku and Canto, Epic medical records system apps for mobile devices, allow clinical teams to gather charts and labs remotely from iPads and iPhones (Android devices coming soon). For children with conditions that send them to urgent care centers frequently, a CHOA app provides patient data to the urgent care center, cutting down administrative time and reducing errors. Kid patients can play video games or use limited-access social media on iPads.
“From what I can tell, the use cases are endless,” said Frank Grogan, CHOA information security analyst. “Moving forward, everything will become more mobile.”
5. Wake County, N.C.
Home of N.C. State University, the city of Raleigh and parts of Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, Wake County uses AirWatch to manage iPhones and iPads. The county recently started using iPads at job fairs to capture applicant information so their information is transmitted to HR departments right away. Wake County parks and recreation staff manage iPad-based educational programs for kids, for example identifying animals and plants anywhere in the park system.
Ivan Kanner, Wake’s enterprise mobility administrator, praised the synergy of AirWatch, the Apple Device Enrollment Program and the Apple Volume Purchase Plan. Devices are completely secured, and the programs “make your deployment so much easier.”
6. United Bank
A $20 billion regional bank holding company based in the Washington D.C. area, United Bank uses AirWatch-managed mobile devices to access email and business documents and communicate easily. AirWatch ensures security and compliance to keep sensitive bank data safe. The bank is growing through acquisitions. AirWatch’s integration with existing directory services makes onboarding new employees simple and fast.
Willem Bagchus, the bank’s messaging and collaboration specialist, noted:
“Once you have that platform that AirWatch gives us, all these other services are possible and it just grows with us. You don’t have to do it all at once. And we have flexibility, whether it’s in the cloud or on prem.”
Read the latest case study about United Bank’s AirWatch journey.
7. Lexington County School District One
Lexington County schools in South Carolina uses AirWatch to manage 22,000 iPads and 3,000 MacOS devices. “IT exists to enable instruction,” said network engineer Michelle Delaney. Before AirWatch, it was difficult for students and teachers to find and configure the right apps for each class. Now that AirWatch streamlines device enrollment and management, teachers no longer have to assume that something will go wrong with the iPads and plan an alternate curriculum.
Delaney attributes much of the program’s success to the fact that students are empowered to set up their own school-issued iPads. A student receives a blank device and goes through three steps that Delaney calls “beep beep bye.”
1. Staff scans the student’s ID card.
2. Staff scans the device tag.
3. Students are off and running on a secure and managed educational journey.
The district is working on integration with Apple School Manager, an education-specific version of the Device Enrollment Program, to roll out Apple Classroom district-wide. Teachers are looking forward to using blended learning, where small groups at different levels within the same classroom can follow different curricula—all while the teacher manages their experience as one classroom group.
This list of seven barely scratches the surface of the amazing and exciting mobile journeys we have had the honor to be a part of this year and years past. Browse case studies based on the product, solution and/or industry here. And don’t forget to check out the stories of those taking mobility to the next level with our #MobileGameChanger videos.
Have a cool AirWatch story of your own? Share it in the comments, and we could feature you in our next video or blog.