Getting iPads ready with paid apps and customized settings for a large amount of personnel?
Apple has a whole section of their support site for deploying iPads "to the Enterprise". What you'll likely find the most useful are the items about the Apple Configurator, which is a free app (available here) for managing and configuring large numbers of iOS devices.

You may also be interested in this Ars Technica article about iOS 6's management features.