Upgrading an aging GWA mobile fleet with VMware and onsite support

The GWA fleet of aging mobile phones needed to be swapped out across the business, with employees given a choice of an iPhone or Samsung device.

Employees were spread across ten locations Australia-wide, five urban and five remote, and a mix of warehouses, showrooms, and offices.

Employees were from a range of job roles and had a varied level of technical knowledge. The upgrade needed to occur in a short timeframe without disruption to productivity.

Visibility and security of the new devices was required through enrolment in Apple DEP or Knox, and in the existing VMWare Airwatch environment.

A review of the profile configuration for each environment was required as these had not been consistently applied across the fleet in previous years. The profile would include the addition of corporate applications plus Outlook and Skype.

The project needed to occur with minimal operational demands of the stretched internal IT resource.

MobileCorp would supply, configure, carrier provision and deliver the iPhones and Samsung devices.

Devices were unboxed, charged, and updated to the latest OS. A Telstra SIM was inserted and the service provisioned, before a screen protector was applied, and the device enclosed in a protective case.

A health check was performed on the existing Apple DEP, Samsung Knox and VMware configurations, and some updates implemented.

A pilot deployment was run with an initial 17 users to understand pain points and potential risk of disruption or downtime.

Then, over a period of three weeks, the MobileCorp support team went onsite to five urban locations to hand-deliver devices, activate SIMs, and talk employees through the process of adding their Apple ID and password, GWA email address and password, and WiFi credentials.

Users at remote locations were provided with a custom Onboarding Guide and telephone support line.