Moving From BYOD to BYOH: Creating a Salesforce Your Users Will Love to Use

If you were in the tech scene around 10 years ago, you might be familiar with the acronym “BYOD,” or, “bring your own device.” The usage of this term skyrocketed when companies began to allow their employees to use their own personal laptops, smartphones, and tablets to conduct their work.??

The goal was simple, people like the devices they have chosen for their personal lives, and extending the use of those devices into their work lives creates a seamless connection between the two. There is no need to waste time figuring out a new operating system, just continue operating your device as fluently as you always have. If a company gives an employee an older device, it’s almost a guarantee that they’ll rely on their personal device anyway.?

How can we apply this same practice to modern cloud-based working environments, particularly in organizations that use Salesforce as a way to track projects, keep up with clients, or collect information in the field?

Bring Your Own Habits

It’s time to move from “BYOD” to “BYOH,” only this time the acronym represents “bring your own habits.” The idea is pretty simple: take advantage of existing skills and technologies that your end users have already mastered to streamline how they work within your Salesforce environment.?

Everyone has a set of applications or features on their phone that they use to interact with the world around them, collecting or manipulating data in various forms. This habitual toolkit includes a way to take pictures, a way to scan documents, annotate pictures, draw sketches, or even edit, fill, and sign PDFs.

What does BYOH Look like in Action?

To give a more concrete example, the iPhone App Store and Google Play Store both have hundreds of options for document-scanning apps. Most people are using these applications, like one called Genius Scan, for example, to turn paper documents into PDF files they can access on their smartphones.?

If you’re reading this, it’s a near guarantee that you have a similar app on your phone that you use to scan docs and email resulting PDFs to yourself so you can upload them on a website, forward them onward to others, or save them for future reference.?

Now, imagine your workforce in the field needs to upload documents as PDFs in Salesforce. What they will most likely do is do what they always do. They’ll open up Genius Scan, scan the document, rename it, and email it to themselves (perhaps even using their personal email address), only to later download it from the email onto their desktop before finally reuploading it to Salesforce.?

Not only does this have far too many redundant steps, there are other concerns. The scanned document is now saved in no less than four different locations (smartphone, email, desktop, Salesforce), an unnecessary waste of storage, which can be expensive. Further, if the data on the document is sensitive, it’s a security risk leaving it lying around in all these other digital spaces.?

Further, once the user arrives at the step to upload to Salesforce, the file needs to be the correct format and size to execute the upload successfully, though this is more of a problem with image upload.

The key here is to employ BYOH to solve all of these problems while removing the storage and security risks. So how can we empower our field users through BYOH?

How Can BYOH Help Your Salesforce Users?

The principle of BYOH leans on the fact that your users have unavoidable habits, and that is a good thing. Let them do what they know best and don’t waste any extra time training them on troublesome tech. The key is to replicate their habits within the Salesforce ecosystem in such a smooth way, that they’ll hardly notice.?

Concretely, you need to extend the capabilities of your Salesforce to allow your users to use their habits within the ecosystem instead of going outside of it, as described above. An example of this is adding a document-scanning capability directly from Salesforce, rather than using an independent one from the device OS application store.

With an extension like this, the user just presses one button and scans the document, which is then uploaded to Salesforce. No more multiple saves and multiple steps to upload to Salesforce.?

How Far Can I Go with BYOH in Salesforce?

Employing a good BYOH strategy is all about finding the right trusted partner to help you give the right tools to your people. The most challenging part of integrating a BYOH strategy is the capture of visual elements in the field. We discussed scanned documents, but the most powerful proof points that can be captured from the field are photos.?

SharinPix is the all-in-one visual solution for your Salesforce implementation. With SharinPix, your users will be able to collect information from the field in the form of photos, scanned documents, and even text information from image-powered dynamic forms. From there the visual possibilities with SharinPix are nearly limitless, allowing you to work with aerial views, plans, and maps, while editing photos, collecting signatures, adding custom annotations, watermarks, and more - all without leaving the Salesforce ecosystem.?

How Can I Learn More?

You can learn more about SharinPix by visiting our AppExchange listing, where you’ll be able to chat with one of our Visual Experts, take the app for a test drive, or even start a full 14-day free trial.?

If you’d like to learn more about how your own Salesforce environment might be able to take advantage of the BYOH mentality, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.