Barron and his colleagues envisioned the Magellan Program as a way to better mobilize and connect its traditionally siloed workforce to the people and systems theyneeded to do their jobs.
The goals of the program: Extend CPS’s networking infrastructure, build its own secure Wi-Fi networks in offices and warehouses, and deploy smartphones and custom mobile applications to all CPS staffers who didn’t currently have a laptop or other mobile device.
For Barron, the first and most significant challenge in deploying smartphones to such a large user base was getting executive buy-in. “One of our biggest headaches has been,
and continues to be, the perception that the technology brings little to the table other than e-mail, and it costs a lot,” Barron says.