This document provides guidance for IT and business managers on integrating touch devices into the workplace. It discusses how touch interfaces have become integral to personal computing and explores why touch is now well-suited for business use. Specific areas where touch can boost productivity are identified, such as sales, customer relations, and meetings. While touch is ideal for some tasks, other input methods like keyboard and mouse remain better suited to tasks involving precision or large amounts of text. The document also outlines how hardware and software vendors are advancing touch technologies and features to make devices more suitable for business needs.

1. Touch Devices for Business
A guide for IT and line-of-business managers

2. The Power
of Touch
In the span of a few short years, touch-based user interfaces
have become an integral part of how people interact with
their personal devices.
With the combination of innovative new device form factors
and an amazing array of touch-controlled apps, it is no
surprise that workers want the same convenience,
immediacy, and mobility they get from their personal touch-enabled
tablets, smartphones, and PCs when they’re in the
workplace.
Many IT and line-of-business (LOB) managers see touch
arriving in their organizations through the front door on
users’ personal devices instead of from a management
decision. And businesses find themselves at crossroads
with touch similar to where their predecessors were in the
1980s when faced with figuring out whether and how PCs
could benefit their enterprises.
This guide will explore the why, where, and how of touch in
business, including ways in which users, organizations, and
the IT industry are using it for greater productivity.
IT and LOB managers will find trends, lessons, background
information, and data points with which they can equip
themselves in upcoming discussions about integrating touch
computing and devices into their own workflows.
2

3. Key Points
Because of its potential to boost worker productivity and collaboration, touch is fundamental to the future of enterprise computing.
Just as employees increasingly expect employers to support touch, employers are also beginning to expect touch proficiency from
employees.
With more business applications available and more smart businesses accommodating touch computing in their IT environments,
deploying or purchasing non-touch-enabled devices is potentially a short-sighted business strategy.
2 in 1s, Ultrabooks™, and Windows* 8.1 apps are gaining prominence as the optimal hardware-software combination for business
productivity with touch screen, keyboard, and touchpad input modes.
3

4. The Whys
4

5. Drag picture to placeholder or click icon to add
Why touch is
so popular
5
Tens of millions of smartphone and tablet users have proven the
potential of small-form-factor touch devices to radically alter the
personal computing landscape.
Touch is now ripe to leap to the larger computing platforms and
revolutionize business computing as well for a number of
compelling reasons:
Touch is instinctive and immediate. To supplement visual
perception, humans instinctively want to manipulate things by
touching them. And unlike a mouse, touchpad, or joystick, using a
touch screen does not place another abstract device between the
eye, the hand, and what is being interacted with on screen. In
addition, no new motor skills need to be learned to use the input
device.
Touch complements other input modes. Touch is a big step toward
multimodal interfaces and one of a growing number of input
modes—keyboard, mouse, and touch combined with gesture, voice,
and machine vision—that users can choose from to optimize their
interactions with their devices.
Touch technology has matured. The decades of research and
investments in the hardware and software behind making touch
computing possible have yielded highly accurate and responsive
touch interfaces. Meanwhile, a critical mass of device technologies
and OS innovations are resulting in cost-effective touch computing
becoming available across a full spectrum of devices.

6. Why touch will not displace
other input modes
Touch is not ideal for every task. There are some tasks where a keyboard, mouse, or other input mode just works better than touch.
For example, tasks that involve inputting or working with large amounts of text or data can be done with touch, but are simply more
efficient with traditional modes. Likewise for many precision tasks such as editing video.
Touch computing introduces new ergonomic factors. The angle and distance of the screen when using a touch device or PC can
affect comfort. Prolonged use—especially when the arm is raised—can potentially cause fatigue. However, the ability to shift among
touch and other modes can help users remain comfortable.
6

7. The Wheres
7

8. Where touch devices
can boost productivity in
businesses
Retail: In-store employee tools for inventory information, training
videos, display illustrations, and sales materials
Mobile point of sale: Simpler, less expensive, and more flexible
alternative to cash registers and traditional retail point-of-sale
devices
Sales and marketing: Presentations, face-to-face customer
interaction, trade shows, and digital brochures
C-suite: Dashboards for real-time business intelligence data to
help monitor and manage performance across the organization
Customer relationship management (CRM): Monitoring tools for
customer-facing campaigns, contact center activity, and
customer feedback in social media
IT administration: Real-time, remote network monitoring and
mobile access to troubleshooting knowledge base
Workforce management: Human resource administration,
employee training, instruction, and signatures on electronic
documents
8

9. Where touch devices
can boost productivity
in businesses (cont.)
Meetings: Note-taking, team collaboration, and sketching out
ideas
Big data: Dashboards for viewing post-computation analysis of
large amounts of data
Creative: Stylus-based apps for early UI sketches, storyboards,
diagrams, and rough visuals
Healthcare: Mobile supplements to hospital workstations to
improve workflow for constantly moving clinicians
Military and defense: Analysis of video feeds and real-time
command/control for officers in the field
Commercial aviation: Digital replacements for paper versions of
flight maps, manuals, and continuous updates
9

10. Drag picture to placeholder or click icon to add
Where touch alone
won’t suffice
10
For many job roles and work tasks, touch will likely work best as
a complement to other input methods.
Design and layout: Tasks that require pixel-perfect precision
require the finer control of a mouse or stylus.
Writing and editing: Touch can help, but with familiar keys,
commands, and shortcuts, keyboard and mouse are still the best
tools for documents.
Data and code: Working with spreadsheets, data fields, and
lines of code is still more efficient using a keyboard and mouse.
Video and photo editing: Touch controls bring some added
convenience, but a keyboard, mouse, or stylus still offer video
and photo editors the greatest productivity.
2 in 1s—the best of
both worlds
Intel® processor-based 2 in 1 devices give users the
convenience and touch of a tablet with the performance and
features of a business laptop in a single device. With a flip of the
screen, a 2 in 1 quickly switches between tablet and laptop
modes to give users the best tool for the task at hand.

11. The Hows
11

12. How touch makes a
difference in business
Brainstorming and collaboration: Touch devices reduce physical
obstacles to collaboration and help people share information in a
more natural way. They offer the immediacy and openness of
collaborating on paper or a whiteboard along with the digital
support—consistency, Internet access, and storage—of electronic
devices. Touch enables meeting participants to engage directly
with content on the screen rather than having one person in
control of the keyboard or mouse.
Sales force automation: Touch brings immediacy and interactivity
to sharing and presenting promotional materials, sales collateral,
product videos, and slide decks with prospects at the point of
decision. In a survey by Dimensional Research, nearly half of
responding businesses reported demand in their organizations for
sales force automation on tablets.1
Business intelligence: While most touch devices do not lend
themselves to compute-intensive database operations, they are
ideal for displaying the dashboards, analysis, and reports that
come from the data—enabling decision makers to monitor and
take action based on current data, no matter where they are.
Meetings: Touch devices foster greater engagement and more
fruitful collaboration, enabling attendees to write, draw, highlight,
modify, move, and zoom objects on screen. Plus, the ideas and
notes from the meeting are easy to save and share—unlike with a
whiteboard.
12

13. How users use touch at work
Intel usability testing on
touch-enabled Ultrabooks™
revealed some interesting insights
into how people engage with touch
for common workplace tasks such
as creating a Microsoft Office
PowerPoint* slide or writing an
email message.
Testing results demonstrated:
• 77% of participants used the touch screen when it was an option.
• Most shifted between input modes—touch screen, keyboard, mouse, and
touchpad—depending on the task.
• Users had a higher level of comfort being able to switch between modes.
• They reported that touch made work seem more like play.
• They had a preference for a touch-enabled Ultrabook over the combination
of tablet and wireless keyboard.2
13

14. How the tech industry is
advancing touch
14
Innovations and investments by hardware and software
companies—and an army of software developers—have rapidly
improved the touch experience to the point where today’s touch
devices can truly be called business-ready.
Intel and Microsoft
Touch-enabled Ultrabooks™, 2 in 1s, tablets, and all-in-one PCs
with the latest Intel® processors giver users the performance
and features they need to get more work done—combined with
the convenience and flexibility of touch.
Touch devices running Windows* 8.1 offer a familiar computing
environment across devices, can run the latest touch-optimized
software such as Microsoft Office 365*, and have the compatibly
to run existing legacy applications and peripherals.
Both Intel and Microsoft are helping to foster the creation of the
next generation of touch apps for business with a wealth of
resources, guides, and developer support in the Intel Developer
Zone (http://software.intel.com) and Microsoft Dev Center
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps).

15. How business is
making touch work
Many smart businesses are embracing touch and taking
advantage of the mobility and convenience that touch devices
offer their employees.
Hardware: A range of business-grade touch devices with Intel®
Core™ vPro™ processors inside—2 in 1 devices, tablets, all-in-one
PCs, and Ultrabooks™—offer the performance, features,
and touch that users want along with the security, compatibility,
and manageability that the business and enterprise IT needs.
Software: Microsoft Windows* 8.1 is designed for touch with
features and commands that give users control at their fingertips.
And touch-optimized applications, such as Microsoft Office 365*
and OneNote* let users enhance their productivity with touch
while experiencing the familiar Desktop environment and file
compatibility across a range of devices running Windows 8.1.
Virtual Desktop Interfaces (VDI): As an interim measure, some
companies configure touch devices with virtual desktop interface
(VDI) software that allows workers to see and control their PC
(or a virtual PC) from anywhere using touch. However, the
usability and productivity are not the same as with fully touch-enabled
apps and devices.
15

16. Source: Why, Where, and How Is Touch Right for Your Business? A Guide for IT and Line-of-Business Managers.
http://www.prowesscorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Why_Touch_for_Business.pdf
1. Dimensional Research sponsored by Model Metrics. “Enterprise iPad And Tablet Adoption: A Survey.” May 2011.
http://www.modelmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/iPadSurvey-May10.pdf
2. Intel. “The Winning Combination of Keyboard and Touch for Ultrabooks.” November 2012.
http://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/876_Ultrabooks_Touch-and-Keyboard_v3_for-PDF.final_.pdf
Copyright © 2014, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Core, Intel vPro, the Look Inside. logo, Look
Inside., and Ultrabook are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States
and/or other countries.
*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
16
Legal

17. Intel Confidential — Do Not Forward