Save time and money with custom imaging on your fleet of rugged computers

Custom imaging sets a base configuration for all your devices that encourages your staff to stay on task and gives you a set up you can use again and again. At JLT we can help you set an image that saves you time and money.

Out of the box experience

What do you do when you unbox a new computer at home? You boot it up and start playing around. You play a movie, check out the applications, put on your favourite album or create a family budget. In fact, you probably start doing all of those things at once and forget to set up your email, which is what you intended to do.

Do you want your staff to do the same with a rugged computer, a work tool? No way! When you deploy a rugged device from another manufacturer out of the box you get a consumer version of Windows. This means your workforce can get online, check the scores of last night’s game or even play a quick round of solitaire instead of getting on with their jobs. But with a custom image you decide what your employees get access to and how the device works.

Almost anything with a computer nowadays has a custom image, like a car. Behind that screen telling you your gas consumption, mileage, speed etc is a computer running embedded Windows. But instead of getting a picture like a desktop on the screen, the manufacturer has created a custom image that shows you only what you need for driving and managing your car.

Keep your employees on task

It’s exactly the same if you install a custom image on your fleet of rugged computers. You can create a picture, an “image”, that shows only the items your workforce needs to do their jobs.

Of course, you can get your IT team to install your applications manually on each individual system. Depending on what you’ve got to install it could take 25+ steps and two hours of staff time to set up one computer. This may sound like an OK amount of time, but imagine if you’re deploying 100 devices. Then we’re talking about 200 hours work for your IT staff, who probably already have a full workload.

And there’s a good chance that with 2,500 steps to complete, one or two of them might be missed or done incorrectly. So, you will need additional support, during and after a deployment. No one has time for that! A better approach is to get one system perfect and then deploy it across your 100 systems before shipment.

At JLT we can do it all for you, so your rugged computers will be ready to go out of the box and your workforce will have to wait until their shift finishes to check the scores.

We can create a custom keyboard to get rid of unwanted keys and create shortcuts that launch apps or carry out a series of keystrokes. So, you get you better “screen” real-estate management, whilst bigger keys mean fewer mistakes. We can set up your boot experience to go straight to your application and lock out any other applications or internet sites. We can set your warehouse management system as the “boot shell”. And we can automate the Windows login, leaving the login point at the application. The possibilities may seem endless, but these choices all save “Dollars and Cents” for your business.

Roll out in minutes

Working with us on a custom image is a simple process and once it’s created you have a blueprint configuration that takes minutes rather than hours to roll out across your devices, even if you are deploying several hundred.

When you place an order with us, for a custom image, we send you a single machine with your chosen operating system (OS). You install your applications and send it back to us. We then work with your team using embedded features to lock down the system to your specifications, helping your business to create the best out of box and user experience.

Once we have created the custom image, we’ll send the image back to you for testing. If you find things that don’t work how you expected or see another potential for customisation, then we move the image back and forth, to create a new version for further testing. Once you’re happy with everything, we’ll roll it out across your whole order during the manufacturing process.

Create consistency for the future

Any custom image we create for you remains your property, so you can use it time and time again giving you consistency for the future. If something happens to a device and you have to send it back for repair, then we have the image ready to reload or if you order more computers, we can roll out the image on new devices. You control it and you decide when and what update.

One final advantage of a custom image is that you can sidestep unnecessary OS updates. When you lock down a device you can stop automatic downloads so if your applications haven’t changed, then you probably don’t need to update the OS. You can keep running the same system for as long as you want, perhaps even ten years.

Over our 25 years we’ve worked with lots of businesses creating bespoke custom images that keep their employees on target and on track. Get in touch to set up a meeting and start building an image that works for you.