Sports Direct adopts Nokia Lumia 820 as corporate smartphone

Sports Direct adopts Nokia Lumia 820 as corporate smartphone

February 24, 2013 | By Surur

NokNok.tv reports that Nokia’s Lumia range has found another corporate adoptee.

Jay Lyford, IT Manager at Sports Direct, a UK sportswear company which has 18,000 employees,  spoke about the choices behind deciding on the Nokia Lumia 820.

“Over the past year or so, we’ve been pressed by the need for managers to be more connected on the go,” says Mr Lyford. “We needed to make sure they had the right devices, enabling managers to take pictures of stock and check, receive and send email on the road.”

“We have been using Nokia’s Lumia range of smartphones since they first launched in October 2011 as we were keen to get a foothold with the Windows Phone operating system,” added Mr Lyford. “We are a Microsoft house through and through and Nokia’s Lumia devices are perfectly suited to our needs.”

The company has previously used Windows Phone 7.5 Nokia Lumia 710 and 800 handsets, but have now upgraded to Windows Phone 8.

“Company Hub allows us to push vital apps, company updates and important communications to users’ devices. Quite simply the Nokia Lumia 820, working with the rest of our Microsoft environment, makes communication across the estate simple and delivers a great end-user experience,” he said

He also expounded on the advantages of Windows Phone over their older Blackberry solution.

“Moving away from BlackBerry meant we could give smartphones to more people because there were no more monthly licence fees to pay, or any increased monthly subscriptions,” explains Mr Lyford. “With yearly savings of approximately £14,400, we are now able to drastically increase the number of email-capable phones in use.”

“Security is very important, especially with such a large user base. We didn’t consider iOS or Android as we are not able to manage individual devices as we would like, nor are we able to secure them.”

User satisfaction with the solution has also been good.

“They love the new Lumia devices because they’re smart, quick and have great functionality,” says Mr Lyford.

The latest news follows the news that Mall of America, Foxtons and Coca cola have also added Windows Phone as an enterprise solution, which can only help adoption and sales of Windows Phone in general.