If you're responsible for IT in a manufacturing plant, warehouse, or logistics operation, you already know: the frontline is where the digital transformation story falls apart.
There’s no shortage of tools for HR, finance, and admin teams sitting at desks. But walk out onto the floor, and it’s a different picture — paper processes, shared devices, ad hoc communication, and systems that never quite fit the way the work actually happens.
From an IT perspective, it’s chaos.
Here’s what we see over and over again in facilities around the country:
Frontline teams use a different point solution for:
Training
Incident reporting
Daily checklists
Visitor logs
Safety documentation
Messaging
Task assignments
None of it’s integrated. Most of it wasn’t built for shared devices. And every tool is another support ticket waiting to happen.
A shift supervisor gets locked out of a training app. Someone’s digital checklist won’t load. A manager tries to update a bulletin board message but can’t remember how.
Even when the issue isn’t strictly “IT,” it lands on your plate. Most IT teams end up doing Tier 1 support for a patchwork of frontline tools — tools they didn’t choose and have not been trained to use.
It’s a quiet drain on time, focus, and resources.
Much of the frontline is still run on tribal knowledge, verbal instructions, or printed SOPs taped to a wall. And even when companies try to “digitize” these workflows, they end up recreating the same mess — just inside a shared Excel Spreadsheet or a dozen disconnected apps.
The result? Inconsistency, rework, and missed steps that nobody sees until there’s a problem.
Most frontline workers don’t have email addresses, don’t sit at desks, and often rotate through roles, shifts, or even sites. Building systems for this part of the workforce isn’t just about software — it’s about rethinking access, communication, and accountability from the ground up.
And because no single department “owns” the frontline experience, solutions tend to be piecemeal:
HR handles onboarding.
Safety owns training and checklists.
Operations manages schedules and tasks.
IT tries to keep the lights on.
Without coordination, everyone builds their own workflows — and IT is left herding cats.
If you're leading IT in a deskless environment, you’re probably looking for a few key things:
Standardization without forcing every team into the same mold.
Visibility into what’s actually happening on the floor — not just what gets reported.
Simplicity — for users, for devices, for support.
Partnership — not just another vendor that leaves you holding the bag on day two.
And maybe most importantly, you need tools that reduce your workload, not multiply it.
If we want to give frontline workers the tools they need to do great work, and if we want IT teams to spend less time untangling broken workflows, we need to stop applying office logic to non-office environments.
We need infrastructure built for shared devices, shifting teams, and role-based access. We need workflows that reflect how the work actually gets done. And we need support models that actually support IT!