Case study

Asr Al Arqam ended IT trips to Dammam and now updates 186 handhelds overnight

A customs broker with 548 devices across three countries replaced a week of handheld updates and site trips with one overnight push.

Introduction

From the port to the warehouse, in three countries

Asr Al Arqam Trading & Logistics clears containers through customs, moves freight between northern Europe and the Gulf, and runs a bonded warehouse inside Jebel Ali Free Zone. It has cleared goods since 1987. The head office and warehouse sit in Jebel Ali. A branch operates in Dammam, a desk sits at Riyadh dry port, and a small transit desk works out of Sohar in Oman.

That puts 548 devices across three countries. Two thirds run Android: rugged handhelds for warehouse pickers, phones for drivers, and tablets on forklifts, dock doors, and gates. A three person IT team runs all of it from Jebel Ali. No IT staff work at any other site.

The company holds Authorised Economic Operator status under the UAE AEO programme. For a customs broker, that status is the reason clients choose it: faster clearance and fewer inspections.

Before choosing Trio, the team compared four options over about 7 weeks. It ran 30 day trials of two of them at Jebel Ali, on 20 handhelds, 10 driver phones, and 5 Windows laptops.

Challenges

Every update needed a hand on every device

The warehouse management app on the handhelds needed an update every six to eight weeks. The previous handheld tool could push updates in theory. In practice, pushes failed without warning, so the systems admin updated each handheld by hand. He arrived at 05:30, before the 06:00 shift, and took devices off the charging racks one at a time.

“He’d get maybe sixty, seventy in a morning, and the shift supervisor would be shouting at him because pickers were standing there waiting for their scanner.”
Rakesh Nair, IT Manager

Jebel Ali took two or three mornings. Riyadh needed a flight or a supervised video call. Dammam had no one on site who could do it, so someone flew. From the vendor’s release to the last handheld updated took about 5 working days. In 2025, IT staff made nine trips to Dammam for device work alone. While the systems admin updated handhelds, backups, the firewall, and the customs integration work waited.

The 138 driver phones had no management at all. Drivers used them for family messages too. Videos filled the storage, and the delivery app could not save proof of delivery photos.

“Then there’s no proof of delivery. Then the client disputes the invoice, and then finance calls me. So it’s not only an IT problem.”
Rakesh Nair, IT Manager

The helpdesk fixed phones over video calls with drivers sitting in their cabs. When that failed, the driver drove to Jebel Ali and lost half a day on the road. The IT Manager estimates this happened about 15 times a month. Phone assignments lived in two spreadsheets, one in IT and one in HR, and they did not match.

The handhelds created a harder problem. They carry a logged in warehouse app that can move bonded stock, so they are meant to stay inside the bonded area. In October 2024, a driver picked up a handheld at the dock and left it on his truck dashboard. The truck crossed the Hatta border to Sohar and came back. Nobody knew for 3 days, until the stock reconciliation came up one device short. The old tool showed only a last check in at the dock. The 2024 year end count could not find 11 handhelds, and the 2025 count could not find 7.

On the Windows side, update approvals went out with no trusted view of whether remote laptops installed them. Passcode checks on driver phones had lapsed in 2022.

“I stopped looking. I’ll be honest.”
Rakesh Nair, IT Manager

Three things landed in the third quarter of 2025. The on premise handheld server reached end of life with a renewal due. The Riyadh dry port desk was expanding into another site with no IT staff. The AEO revalidation was due in May 2026.

Solution

New handhelds enroll themselves out of the box

Handhelds now enroll through Android Zero-Touch Enrollment. The Zebra specific settings the warehouse depends on, including key mapping and WiFi roaming for the cold room, carried over through OEM configurations. In January 2026, an operations colleague in Dammam enrolled that branch’s handhelds straight from the racks, with no IT trip.

App updates run overnight at all three sites

The systems admin tests each warehouse app release on a group of 5 handhelds, then schedules it for 23:00 through Software policies and app deployment. The handhelds are on their racks charging, and the Dammam and Riyadh devices update the same night as Jebel Ali.

Devices that leave the bonded area raise an alert

A geofence around the bonded area alerts IT when a handheld leaves it. Since February 2026, 3 handhelds have left, and all 3 were back the same shift: one from a staff bus, one from a truck cab, and one from a prayer room. The 12 gate kiosks and 30 forklift and dock tablets run in Kiosk and single purpose mode and show only the gate check in app or the warehouse app.

The team found a second use for geofences that nobody planned. A geofence around Riyadh dry port now tells the clearing desk when a driver’s phone arrives, so release paperwork starts before the truck reaches the gate. Driver phone location is limited to working hours, the dry port geofence, and phones reported lost. Drivers were told in writing, in the device policy they sign.

“They start the paperwork before the driver is even at the gate.”
Rakesh Nair, IT Manager

Drivers get support where they are parked

The helpdesk now connects to a driver’s phone while the driver is parked and fixes it remotely. When HR marks a driver as leaving, transport locks the phone the same day and signs out the delivery app.

Audit evidence comes out of reports

Windows PCs at every site report patch status through the Patch and vulnerability center. Passcode and device settings across the fleet show in Compliance monitoring. For the May 2026 AEO revalidation, the IT Manager exported the reports and the compliance manager added them to the file.

Result

The result

Updating the warehouse app used to take about 5 working days across three sites, with flights to Dammam. In the August 2026 release, 179 of 186 handhelds (96 percent) had the update by 06:00 the morning after it was scheduled. The last 7 updated within 2 days, as they came back from repair or charging.

Device trips to Dammam fell from nine in 2025 to none since go live in February 2026.

Setting up a new handheld took about 25 minutes of hands on time with barcodes and manual configuration. In March 2026, the IT Manager timed the first 10 of 60 replacement handhelds at about 4 minutes each. The helpdesk enrolled the other 50 in one afternoon while working tickets.

Windows patch status used to be unknown. In August 2026, 138 of 146 Windows machines (94.5 percent) were on the current cumulative update within 10 days of release. Most of the rest were laptops of staff on leave.

The May 2026 AEO revalidation closed with no IT observations. Preparing the IT evidence took two people about 3 days in 2023. In 2026 it took about half a day.

Year end counts found 11 missing handhelds in 2024 and 7 in 2025. Since February 2026, every handheld that left the bonded area came back the same shift.

Driver visits to Jebel Ali for phone fixes fell from about 15 a month to three or four, mostly broken screens. In the last six months, 21 of 22 departing drivers’ phones came back.

The IT team estimates it gets back about 12 hours a week across three people. That time now goes into the customs integration work the systems admin was hired for. The old handheld server was switched off on 4 February 2026.

Features used

Android Zero-Touch-Registrierung Software-Richtlinien und App-Verteilung Geofencing Kiosk- und Single-App-Modus Fernwartung und Fehlerbehebung Patch- und Schwachstellen-Center Compliance-Monitoring

“I’d tell them, if you have devices in more than one country, stop managing them from more than one place. That’s the whole thing.”
Rakesh Nair
IT Manager