Although IoT and smart devices are exciting and offer new capabilities, sometimes the most reliable form of communication is an old-fashioned pager.
In 2019, connectivity has become the norm. According to industry experts, the number of connected devices is expected to exceed 75 billion worldwide by 2025, which marks a 500% increase over the past ten years. These numbers have crept into the enterprise as well — surveys show that 91 percent of corporate employees use at least one mobile application in their day-to-day jobs.
This rise of IoT and smart devices has sparked a sense of urgency in enterprises, who are feeling the pressure to adapt as quickly as possible to new technologies. In fact, 85 percent of enterprise executives feel they have a mere two years to digitally transform their organizations or risk falling behind the competition. But amidst the proliferation of new devices, certain industries are focused on an entirely different, more traditional form of technology — pagers.
Despite the widespread adoption of smart technology across so many verticals — which bring with them demands for better networks — pagers still play an integral role for many workers across different sectors of the workforce. While many CIOs remain focused on finding the shiniest new tech tools for their workers, it is prudent for others to take note of where and how pagers are still being leveraged in today’s workforce.
Although new technologies have enabled companies to harness capabilities we once thought impossible, sometimes there’s simply no need to reinvent the wheel. In some cases, the simplest form of communication is what is most reliable — which is why pagers can still provide value in an era defined by IoT and smart connectivity.
Unlike a smartphone, pagers only receive small bits of simple data that require little bandwidth, meaning it takes very little for them to function. This makes them more reliable in the event of crowded networks or emergencies. As a result of this reliability, they have maintained their hold in certain industries, particularly ones where workers regularly deal with life-threatening situations. The workers that most commonly deploy and use pagers today include hospital staff, firefighters, EMTs, and even nuclear engineers.
Aside from their reliability, there are several other excellent value adds that pagers can offer an organization.
According to a recent report, a majority of workers feel distracted by technology like smartphones or tablets while they are at work. In fact, more than one third of millennials feel personally distracted by their phones for nearly two hours during their workday, and don’t have the training to develop better skills for limiting their smart device use.
Unlike a smartphone or an IoT device, pagers don’t have the ability to distract end-users in this way. There are no apps to download or games to play — they only send and receive alerts.
Alert fatigue happens when an individual becomes desensitized to alarms as a result of being exposed to a large volume of alerts in their day-to-day lives. For physicians working in hospitals, excessive alerts can result in sensory overload and lead to longer response times. In fact, more than 19 in 20 hospitals are worried about alert fatigue and the negative effects it may have on patient safety.
An excellent way to monitor and mitigate alarm fatigue is to rely on pagers instead of traditional alarms. When using a paging system, hospital administrators can bypass a nursing station and send alerts directly to the physician’s pager. And unlike a mobile device — which is bound to have a myriad of apps sending constant pings — a physician’s pager should only be sending relevant critical alerts, minimizing the number of pings and signaling to a physician that all pager alerts require their attention.
In natural disasters or emergencies, it’s important for buildings and campuses to be equipped with well-designed paging systems. Paging products now offer advanced functionality that enables them to connect to a facility’s network and run as a communication tool for a wide array of end users.
During emergency events, like earthquakes, fires, or floods, CIOs must be sure their communication systems are fit to withstand network damages. Because of new paging systems’ ability to integrate into even the most robust and widespread networks, they are much more reliable than other forms of communication when disaster strikes.
If you’re a CIO or IT director of a major business or university, you need to ensure your building, office, or campus is capable of offering reliable communications — especially during critical events. Emergencies happen, and you need to be prepared if you are to keep your employees safe. Luckily, Turn-key Technologies, Inc. (TTI) can help.
With experience designing and deploying large scale paging solutions across 48 states and in countries around the world, enterprise CIOs can count on TTI’s line of modular and fully redundant paging terminals. Our systems support voice, alphanumeric, and numeric pagers so that companies of all shapes and sizes can find solutions that work for them. Visit our website today to learn more.