Wearable Technology – Dark Horse Of Enterprise Workforce Efficiency ?

Wearables are the latest high in the tech world. They are well on their way into becoming a mainstream entity in a lot of industries already. From Fitness to manufacturing, wearables are here to stay.

Today,the wearable technology industry is a $700 million industry, which is likely to exceed $6 billion by 2016. They take the form of fitness and activity trackers today and are very likely to take over business enterprises tomorrow.

Then again, what is the role of wearables in an enterprise?

Wearables, if used effectively, can really bring up the efficiency of an enterprise. It has been proved in another survey conducted by PwC, that employees who use wearable technology in their workplace increase their productivity by 8.5% and their job satisfaction by 3.5%.

That said, some possible benefits of using wearables in an enterprise are as follows:

• Workforce – Wearables like augmented reality headsets can help in the process of training the employees by enabling real-time sharing of screens etc. and also by providing real-time feedback from the trainees, which makes training much more effective. Furthermore AR has unlimited possibilities considering enterprise workforce, depending on the industry, of course.
• Retail – In the retail industry, wearables can help in speeding up the processes of checking out and making payments and also improve overall customer service in the stores. They also help in hastening purchase decision as they provide real-time information relevant to their purchase. Sometimes, customer behaviour can be predicted by analyzing his/her buying habits and hence wearables can be used to send out information that is particularly relevant to a particular customer. That way they can influence the purchase decision of the customers in a good way and thereby increasing purchases.
• Manufacturing – Wearables can help accelerate production by providing the workers with hands-free supervision tools and techniques such as tutorials, reference materials and troubleshooting wizards.
• Services – In the services industry, wearables can provide real-time access to vital information which can facilitate quick action.
• Medical centres – Wearables can be used to increase accuracy of information and hence rationalize procedures etc.

Some concerns

However, there are some areas of concern regarding the use of wearables, privacy and security being the main ones. Consumers are always a little cautious about the security of their personal information being used by wearables. From a survey conducted by the PwC, almost 82% of the respondents said they were worried about their wearables invading their privacy. Another 86% felt that wearables make them more exposed to security breaches. But, this concern is fast changing. As the benefits of using wearables become more appealing, consumers are more willing to take these risks.

Another major concern is the lack of consistency of data from wearables. In this age of information overload, it is important that the information we receive is reliable and consistent. Hence, it is necessary that these wearables not only provide useful and reliable information, but also provide useful insights from the data. This will facilitate better decision making.

The third concern is of course price. While consumers already have multi-functional smartphones with them, they will be less willing to spend on another gadget that offers similar functionality, unless they have anything substantially distinct to offer.

Wearables are clearly becoming more acceptable by the people, Nevertheless slowly. They are slowly leading the way to a wearable world.