Renewal of smartphone fleet to enhance data security, reduce maintenance efforts, and to better meet users’ needs without burdening the tight budgets of the customers.
Nokia 3 and Nokia 3.1 were chosen because they run pure Android One and offer a three-year promise for rapid security patches with a good performance/cost ratio.
Each day, early education employees in Europe make, on average, more than four manual record entries for every child they are looking after. This adds up to over one million manual entries each working day. In practice, over ten million working hours per month are used on carrying out administrative duties*.
When Petri Järvinen, CEO of mukavaIT Oy, realised how much employees in early education can be taken away from their work of taking care of kids, he started to develop a solution that could change this.
Petri Järvinen explained his company’s mission,
“We want to help our customers to re-allocate the huge amount of monthly working hours spent on making manual entries or doing unnecessary paperwork.”
Since then, the young start-up has developed a multifaceted service for early education called Mukava. It combines the requirements of parents, day care staff and administration staff into a single seamless service entity, making everyday life easier at home and in day care. An Android-based app for smartphones is the key component of the solution.
In 2014, mukavaIT won a public tender from the regional authorities of the Finnish Pirkanmaa region to provide a next-generation mobile attendance recording solution for early childhood education and care (ECEC) organisations in Pirkanmaa municipalities and the City of Tampere.
The client required a turnkey solution with everything – hardware, software and support – from one source for easier service management. Today, Mukava is deployed in the kindergartens of the City of Tampere and surrounding cities Kangasala, Lempäälä, Vesilahti, Pirkkala, Nokian kaupunki, Ylöjärvi ja Hämeenkyrö.
Petri Järvinen said,
“Before the end of the three-year leasing period, we did a thorough analysis of customer feedback. We found, that although customers were generally, very satisfied with our Mukava solution, there was popular demand for better hardware that offered more functionality and performance.”
mukavaIT decided to renew the smartphone fleet to better meet the needs of the kindergartens but without exceeding their budgets. Petri Järvinen said:
“We chose Nokia 3 and then, after its market launch, Nokia 3.1, due to their excellent performance vs price ratio. Nokia’s up-to-date security was another important factor for us because our customers are handling sensitive data.”
The decision was made after thorough market research to identify devices that met the technical and financial requirements. As far as technology was concerned, the smartphones had to fulfil the following criteria: robustness; a clean, up-to-date Android operating system with as little bloatware as possible; regular security updates; and NFC functionality.
NFC allows Mukava users to save as much as possible time: for instance, each child has a small NFC-enabled key fob token, and they flash the fob at the Mukava smartphone when arriving at or leaving kindergarten. This makes it very easy and quick to sign in and out. If the key fob token has been forgotten, Mukava allows them to sign in and out manually by simply pressing a dedicated button.
The Nokia 3 and the Nokia 3.1 both receive two years of Android OS updates and three years of security patches from global sales start. As the Nokia 3.1 is part of the Android One program, the security patches are delivered monthly across the three-year period**.
Andrej Sonkin, General Manager Enterprise Business at HMD Global, added,
“We take the security patch delivery promise very seriously. We make it transparent when we have made new updates available for our Nokia smartphones and also what has been patched.”
The Nokia Smartphone Security Maintenance Release Summary can be found here for all devices of the Nokia smartphone portfolio.
The use of Android One was another major reason why Nokia 3 and Nokia 3.1 was chosen for Mukava. Both smartphones run the pure Android version as it is developed and delivered by Google. This ensures that the smartphones come with just a very small, curated set of apps. Petri Järvinen concluded,
“We believe that over time the new devices will keep functioning better and need less maintenance and support. This will provide better margins for device leasing services which will also benefit our customers.”
Last but not least, a clear and efficient delivery channel to customers when the rollout has started and during the life cycle of the devices was another requirement that HMD Global could fulfil.
Until today, mukavaIT has shipped close to seven hundred Nokia smartphones to its customers with the pre-installed Mukava-app and F-Secure Mobile Security to make the devices resilient against cyber-attacks. Feedback from customers is great. Petri Järvinen summarized,
“We have not received any functional complaints so far.”
In view of the positive customer ratings and the very low return rate, mukavaIT will be able to meet the schedule according to which all equipment will be replaced before the end of the first quarter of 2019. By then, more than 1,000 Nokia smartphones with the pre-installed Mukava-App will support educators in the kindergartens in the Pirkanmaa region by noticeably reducing their
daily administrative routine work. This allows them to spend more time with the children.
* Source. http://mukavait.fi/en/
** The Nokia 3 receives quarterly security updates in the third year after
the date of global market launch.
mukavaIT is a Finnish startup company (part of Abilita Oy group) founded in 2012. mukavaIT
provides a state-of-the-art service Mukava (or „Päikky“ in Finnish market) for day care,
combining the various requirements of parents, caregivers, and administration staff into one
service. First and foremost, Mukava is designed to simplify daily routines at home and in day
care. www.mukavait.fi/en
Headquartered in Espoo, Finland, HMD Global Oy is the home of Nokia phones. HMD designs and markets a range of smartphones and feature phones targeted at a range of consumers and price points. With a commitment to innovation and quality, HMD is the proud exclusive licensee of the Nokia brand for phones and tablets.
For further information, see www.hmdglobal.com. Nokia is a registered trademark of Nokia Corporation. Android, Android One and other marks are trademarks of Google LLC.