Top Things to Consider When Choosing a Multi Device Charge Station or Cart
14.08.19 in Blog, Industry News
With hundreds of multi device charge stations on the market, how different can all of these options really be? After all, it’s just a charging station, right?
Choosing the right multi device charge station or cart may not seem like a big deal, but seemingly small differences between manufacturers and products could make a huge impact on your mobile device roll-out and your ability to manage devices long term. To help narrow down what benefits and features will best meet your needs, we made a checklist of things to consider when choosing a multi device charge station or cart.
Setup
| Question Applies to: | ||
| Question to Consider | Charging Station | Charging Cart |
| How long will it take to cable this product? |  |
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| Are cables included? | |
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| Are there features that simplify setup? | |
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| Are setup guides or videos available to help get the multi device charge station up and running? | |
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| Is assembly required? | |
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Ease of Use
| Question Applies to: | ||
| Question to Consider | Charging Station | Charging Cart |
| How simple is it plug in/unplug devices between each use? | |
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| Are there features that facilitate and speed up hand out and pack up of devices? | |
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| Will product features unique to this station or cart simplify or speed up other areas of my workflow? | |
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| Are slots on this unit numbered? | |
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Download the full checklist below. |
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PC Locs has been providing schools and business with 20 years of high-quality, innovative multi device charge stations and carts. We are a company dedicated to the design, manufacture and functionality of the highest quality security, charging and transport solutions for mobile device deployments. With over a million devices protected in PC Locs solutions throughout 20+ countries across the globe, we make our customers’ lives easier by developing charging solutions with scalable and modular designs that take workflow into consideration.
Our charging solutions are designed and developed with extreme consideration for the end user. We listen to the needs of our customers and design products to solve pain points specific to their needs. Because of this, our products boast new-to-market features not offered by our competitors: high-quality components, LED lights, ultra mobile designs, a back-end management portal, compact solutions, lifetime warranties and much more. We take great pride in our excellent customer service, always putting the customer first. Our customers are our partners–and by working hand-in-hand, we’re able to provide the best solution for each customer’s unique needs.
PC Locs CEO Honored with EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Award
12.08.19 in Blog, Industry News
PERTH, WA, 9 Aug 2019 – James Symons, CEO of Perth-based company PC Locs, named Regional Winner in the 2019 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ awards.
PC Locs is pleased to announce that James Symons has been awarded the 2019 Western Region EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™, in the disruptor category. Symons joins other outstanding entrepreneurs from across Australia who will compete for the ultimate prize of being named 2019 Australian EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™.
Perth School teacher, Paul Symons (James’ father) began the company in 1998 with a friend of his after inventing a device to lock down computers getting stolen from his classroom. The family’s back yard shed in Dianella became the manufacturing, sales, marketing and admin headquarters for the company when James began selling the devices to schools from the back of his car.
After running sales and marketing for the business, James took over as General Manager in 2006, with his father insisting he buy into the business to ensure he had “skin in the game”.
The rapid growth of the business required James to leave the company’s “backyard shed” beginnings behind and relocate to Wisconsin, USA in 2012. From here he established the US and European divisions of the business.
“It is an honour to be recognised among some of the most inspiring business leaders and entrepreneurs in the state”, says Symons.
Using the export brand name LocknCharge, the US and European units now contribute to more than 80 per cent of the company’s total revenue.
With innovation at its core, the company recently launched its new consumer brand, TechDen, which is the first product to combine software with hardware to teach kids positive habits for using their devices. With the adoption of mobile devices in the workplace, PC Locs is now transforming how businesses manage and track their digital assets through the PC Locs smart locker systems.
The company employs over 100 staff across 9 offices globally, selling products into more than 20 countries around the world. James’ father, Paul Symons remains as co-owner, director and occasional product designer.
“I have somehow convinced the incredible people that I work with that the journey is worth the sacrifice and I am so grateful for how loyal and passionate they are. They literally do the hard work. Having the support of my Dad as co-owner and business partner is more than I could ever ask for. He is the ultimate visionary, inventor and entrepreneur, and I am privileged to carry on what he started”.
PC Locs protects around two million devices for more than 22,000 business customers globally and has commercial relationships with some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Apple, Dell and Google.
James will join his fellow National finalists representing Western Australia at the regional national celebration dinner on October 24th in Sydney where National category winners and the 2019 Australian EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ will be announced.
About PC Locs and LocknCharge
PC Locs and LocknCharge are privately owned, multi-national brands, with the main headquarters in Perth, Australia. The vision is to be globally recognised as the most innovative and trusted brands in developing solutions for managing deployments and healthy use of mobile technology. The mission is to make peoples’ lives easier – those managing deployments of mobile technology and those using it.
Learn more about the brands:
www.pclocs.com.au
www.lockncharge.com
www.techden.com
About EY Entrepreneur of the Year™
EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The program makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential and recognises the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, Entrepreneur Of The Year™ celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognising them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 145 cities in over 60 countries.
The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ program, launched in Australia in 2001, is one of the country’s leading business awards programs. It has so far recognised over 1,500 leading Australians for their entrepreneurial business success and each year, through its global program, acknowledges thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide. Founded and produced by EY, the program in Australia is sponsored by Commonwealth Bank (Principal sponsor), Qantas (Sponsor) and Austrade (Supporter).
Further information about the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ program can be found at ey.com/au/eoy
Small tech solution helps speed up growth for fast food restaurant
03.04.19 in Blog, Testimonials
Background
On September 22, 2016, Monica Daniel and her husband Craig celebrated the grand opening of their very own franchised fast food restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin. When you step inside their doors, you can feel the energy of the bustling, family-owned business, and it doesn’t take long after talking to the owners to realize how passionate they are about their work, their staff, their customers and community.
However, if you have indeed stepped inside their doors, you’re actually in the minority of their customers; 70% of their business is done through the drive through lane.
They’ve done the research – talking to several other owners about how to grow sales. It’s not a new ad campaign like some might expect, but instead a faster drive through – and they’ve made it happen. When the line gets long (and the weather cooperates) employees go straight to the customers waiting outside and use iPads to display the menu, take the order and even collect payment. This “iPOS” system keeps the line moving at an incredible rate, with the average customer spending just seven seconds at the window.
Challenge
The iPads are crucial to the smooth and efficient operation of the Daniel’s restaurant, and with such heavy, time-sensitive use, charging sometimes posed a challenge. The devices didn’t have a designated charging spot, and the store was going through charging cables all too quickly. Whether lost or damaged, the $20 replacement cables were adding up.
Solution
When an “off-duty” PC Locs employee pulled into the drive through lane and noticed the iPad system in use, a light bulb went off: This could be dinner and a new partnership. He got connected with Craig Daniel and the timing was serendipitous.
They discussed the store’s technology workflow and challenges. Craig later visited the PC Locs headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin with one of his devices in its case to see the Putnam 8 Charging Station™ in action. It was exactly what they hadn’t even known they needed.
Results
The Putnam has streamlined an already speedy workflow for the restaurant. The compact station is mounted to a wall, which not only designates a home base for the devices; it also keeps them completely out of the way of the hustling employees fulfilling orders. Before their iPOS system, they could serve roughly 100 cars an hour in the drive through. Now, their record is 140.
The station is equipped with eight pre-wired MFi approved lightening cables that are just the right length to connect to stored devices. Meaning everything stays organized, untangled and in place. Purchasing the Putnam has saved them the cost of replacing cables, which essentially makes it pay for itself.
External color-coded LED lights let the team know which iPads are ready to go so that they never send someone outside with a half-charged device. It also prevents dreaded plugged-in-without-power mishaps – you see it lit up and know immediately that the power supply is connected and doing its job.
As the Daniels continue to grow with smart, calculated improvements, they have no doubt they’ll break their service record this summer.
To download a PDF of this case study, click here.
How Customer Feedback has Shaped our Product Lineup
18.03.19 in Blog, Product News
You talk, we listen. Not every business can say that truthfully. Our customers are so valuable to us because their feedback inspires innovation and evolution with every new product. They may be surprised to learn just how valuable they are to PC Locs; customer feedback has, in fact, influenced several of the products in our lineup. Take a look at how we gather this intel and use it to create products that save you time, money, and stress.
Overall, as we strive to make life easier for all our customers, we understand that the best way to drive new innovations and product improvement can come from no better source than our customer base. We strive towards being a partner with all of our customers, not just a vendor. All of our staff from our owners, CEO, to the warehouse team, are out in the field and working, listing and trying to improve the customer experience. Because for consumers, customer experience will become more important than price and product by 2020.
Globally, we have several processes in place to ensure we capture feedback from our customers, including:
Surveys
We currently run several different surveys to understand how customers and businesses evaluating our solutions feel about them.
- Customer purchase – After purchase, we send our customers a survey to find out why they selected us. This helps us better understand what features and services we need to keep as a top customer benefit, as well as those they didn’t like. Additionally, we ask each and every customer how we could improve our current offering.
- Decided not to purchase – For every person who evaluated our solutions and didn’t select it, we ask them what problem they were trying to solve with the solution and the main reason they didn’t pick us.
- Customer loyalty – Every month we send out surveys to our customer base to determine how happy they are with their partnership with PC Locs. The survey asks them to give us specific feedback on why they feel the way they do.
- Support – We know there are times when people need some support. It’s a customer service fact that nine in ten Americans use service to gauge whether or not they will do business with a company. Whether it be a product set up, query, or just some advice, whenever someone has an interaction with our support team, we send them a survey to help understand their experience and ensure we answered their questions.
These surveys provide insights about products, service and more. Every comment is reviewed and cataloged, with the aim of extracting different product improvement suggestions or pain points customers may be experiencing with our solutions. After that, our innovations team reviews the feedback and determines if we should implement some of the comments into our future enhancements. We try to understand what makes our customers happy and their life easier this helps us ensure we don’t get rid of the features that customers love!
Events
We are proud to attend many events across the globe every year. At each one, we have the chance to interact with our customers and potential customers and hear what their needs are. If customers are having issues with our products, we track that information via our event scanners, and after the event, we can follow-up and try to fix their issues. Other times, we may adjust our product lines from the feedback.
Great Partnerships
We are always striving for great relationships with our customers and these relationships often produce some of the best product ideas and developments. Don’t believe us? Here are two examples:
- Denton ISD wanted a wall charging station that could be mounted to the wall to reduce the amount of floor space used in a classroom. PC Locs offered them our Carrier 10, Denton liked it, but their classroom size was bigger than 10, and they really needed a 15 unit. They had been a great PC Locs partner and talked with us to help us understand their issue. PC Locs added the Carrier 15 to our product line to help Denton ISD and other schools in the same situation.
- Putnam City Schools – Putnam city is a long time customer of PC Locs. They had many PC Locs products but were having an issue with reduced space in the classroom. They came to us and drafted a product they thought would be perfect, on the back of a napkin. We agreed it would be awesome, and began working on creating the new product, the Putnam 16 Charging Station and later followed by the Putnam 8 Charging Station. Putnam City Schools acted as the beta customer and tested the new product before it was officially launched into the market.
Basket Evolution
Our basket evolution has been driven both by customer feedback as well as the need to adapt to the device landscape. We have had 5 different basket designs. Our first basket did not entirely match up to our standards and customer expectations.
Unhappy with the feedback, we designed a new basket. Both these early baskets were designed to accommodate 10 iPads.
We soon partnered with Samsung and realised that our baskets would not work with their devices due to power plug location on the device. In response, we designed a more universal basket to work with all tablets.
Feedback on this basket was much more positive, yet we still had customers suggesting that they would like a smaller basket that held fewer devices. We subsequently designed a smaller, 5 unit basket, and incorporated colors.
Once more, this was great for tablets, but the arrival of Chromebooks soon made obvious the need for a basket that would work with 11”-13” notebook style devices. We think you can see where this is going: a new basket was designed!
PC Locs takes a lot of pride in listening to our customers and utilising feedback to develop and improve products. We always have our pulse on the industry, and that helps us continue to evolve and stay relevant in education, retail, healthcare, manufacturing and more!
Technology Management is Central to Quality, Person-Centred Care
18.03.19 in Blog, Testimonials
Background
There are 19 care homes in the Hallmark Care Homes network, where innovative and award-winning facilities are matched with the personal touch only a family-run provider can offer. All across England and South Wales, residents are enabled to live active, fulfilling lives because of Hallmark’s person-centered approach to care. Hallmark maintains a standard of excellence throughout their organization, and as such, continues to improve upon their offerings and processes. One recent upgrade included the launch of 135 tablets in tandem with a gradual introduction of a new electronic care planning system. This transition from handwritten care plans to electronic allows for better oversight and individually tailored care. It also improves inclusivity of family members, too, as they can access their relative’s plan or record.
Challenge
Undergoing a digital shift of this size always poses some logistical challenges. Initially, the tablets were left to charge on worktops, filing cabinets or the closest windowsill. Sorting through a spaghetti-like pile of cables or finding devices not fully charged properly was counter-productive, and sometimes charging ports were found damaged after being connected too hastily. Additionally, the tablets needed to be shared among many people – the teams within the care homes and visiting professionals alike. With heavy use of the tablets throughout the day, tidy storing and charging of the devices quickly became an important priority.
Solution
Hallmark’s external IT team suggested looking into CarryOn™ portable charging stations by PC Locs. The ultra-mobile, aluminum cases each hold up to five devices for streamlined storage and simultaneous charging. They were the perfect solution. Hallmark purchased enough CarryOns to have one in every study of every home across their network. They used the included wall-mounting kits to hang the CarryOns – giving their devices a designated home base without giving up any floor or desk space.
Results
Capturing information on every patient interaction has become significantly easier with the new electronic care planning system. Instead of charting hours after a visit, caregivers are enabled to report real-time information on the devices. This information is also more accessible by senior management and support staff, allowing for oversight and further driving home person-centred care. The CarryOn charging stations have helped bring order to this new workflow. Hallmark even reports that they’ve not encountered any challenges with the deployment. The shared fleet of devices has become easier to manage and maintain, which ultimately impacts everyone – staff, caregivers, families and residents. Next on the horizon for Hallmark Care Homes is an app version of the same care planning software. This would open up even more on-the-go accessibility and communications improvements for the caregiving teams. Compatible with all iPad models and many other USB chargeable devices, the CarryOn is ready to keep up.