Tokheim chose MediaContact

Tablets replacing PDAs – How to achieve a successful transition?

Facing the aging PDA system equipping its 1300 service engineers in Europe, Tokheim Company, one of the world’s leading suppliers for filling stations equipment, decided to replace its mobile devices with Android tablets.

Confronted with this transition, Tokheim needed to face several major challenges: to ensure the migration of its business application on Android, to manage a base of tablets, to be able to act quickly in the event of terminals dysfunction and to have a decentralized administration platform by country. The transition of rugged PDAs running Windows Mobile to Android tablets (Galaxy Tab Active 8’’) required many changes. The business application, originally developed by Kimoce under Windows Mobile needed to be adapted to the new operating system. Concerning the management of Android tablets, Tokheim decided to set up an MDM tool (Mobile Device Management).

MDM software: the key to administer tablets

After consulting the international MDM software market, Tokheim selected Telelogos solution – MediaContact – for its functionalities, its flexibility, its responsiveness and the quality of its support. With MediaContact – MDM solution and via 3G/4G communications, Tokheim can now:

• Monitor the different versions of the business application and update silently and smoothly (transparent to the user)
• Administer decentralized devices by country
• Take remote control of tablets in order to remotely assist technicians and troubleshoot without exchange mechanism which sometimes deprived them of their PDA for a day or even more.

 
On the one hand, Tokheim uses MediaContact solution to manage technical documentations which were made available on tablets and to synchronize their updates. On the other hand, Tokheim also manage tablets password policy.

The deployment of new tablets and MDM solution

« We had to set up the new solution rapidly especially in Benelux countries where the situation was urgent because the 150 PDA were obsoletes and more and more unstable.

After choosing Android tablets Galaxy Tab Active 8” and MediaContact MDM software, we tried out the solution with a first pilot of some tablets in order to deploy it to all Benelux technicians. Six months passed between the trial and the end of the deployment, which is a short period considering the reworking of its business application in parallel.

Nowadays we have more than 800 tablets deployed through Europe. Our objective is to manage 1500 tablets with MediaContact solution by June 2016. First feedbacks are very positives, from now on, technicians don’t have to send back their terminal to make them repaired except in case of damage. Technicians are also very satisfied with this new solution which is easy to pick up, more reliable and above all faster from execution; this solution suggests new rich functional inputs.” 

Eric Bonnevay, Tokheim CIO