When it comes to mobility, there’s a lot of talk about the subject, but is that all there is or are there really people out there walking the walk and getting real benefits from mobilising their workforce or aspects of their business processes?
The first thing to say is that the messaging around mobility is getting louder. Hardly surprising when notebook sales are increasing and growth in desktop PC sales is slowing. In addition, handhelds and smart phones are increasingly being picked up by the company radar when it comes to analysing future product strategy.
At its most basic, mobility enables manager/owners in small businesses to have the flexibility to work outside the office and from home when they need to. Alan Morton, a director of Moneywise Financial Planning, an independent financial specialist based in Dublin with six staff, is a perfect example of this form of mobility. He reveals the company’s three directors all have the ability to work from home and access Moneywise’s systems over broadband using Microsoft Small Business Server 2003.
“It’s magic,” he says. “Evening and weekend working is no problem. It’s also useful for avoiding the busy commuter time because you can work from home from 8.30 to 10. Two of us have young kids and with the amount of bugs going around, it’s good to be able to work from home.”
Ask him to quantify the return on investment and Morton admits he “couldn’t put anything hard and fast on it”, but he says the company has witnessed a dramatic increase in business over the past six months and if it hadn’t spent money on its IT system, “we probably wouldn’t have been able to handle it”.
One of the big applications when it comes to emphasising the attractions of mobility is email access. When it comes to email, BlackBerry has led the charge for mobile devices outside of the notebook category. Given Ireland’s success in the recent six nations tournament, it’s perhaps opportune to mention the recent agreement between the International Rugby Board (IRB) and O2 to enable its members to keep in touch with day-to-day business at the Dublin-based headquarters while traveling around the world visiting other rugby unions and organising tournaments like the Rugby World Cup.
By using BlackBerry, Greg Thomas, head of communications at the IRB, says its easier for him to deal with media requests from all over the world at different times of the day and night. “In the past, when I was on the other side of the world, it used to be difficult to reach me but now media requests and operational documents are sent straight to my BlackBerry in my pocket. While sitting in airports waiting for flights, I can continually monitor and respond to the flood of emails to my inbox which ultimately reduces stress and keeps me on top of business without being chained to the desk.”
IT reseller Datapac, which has offices in Dublin, Wexford, Belfast and Cork, also wanted its staff to access email on the move, so it implemented Vodafone’s EmailAnywhere to enable its engineers and account managers to receive and respond to emails on their mobile devices, phones or PDAs, between off-site meetings, when commuting or on business trips.
“With over 60 mobile workers, we need to access our e-mail and our calendars when we are on the road and the easiest way to do that is with a mobile device”, says managing director David Laird. “Staff members need to access their e-mail via mobile phone, PDA or laptop and we can now do this with EmailAnywhere”.
But the product is not just about e-mail – Datapac staff can also check their calendars to see what changes have been made to their schedule and view the information on their mobile phone.
There’s more to mobility than email of course. IT reseller, Qualcomm, has found a different use for mobile technology. Managing director Ken Breen says that as a small business with 35 employees, it is a very good user of mobile technology and with 20 or more engineers out in the field, the reseller decided to buy a solution for logging and tracking engineer calls.
The system, FieldTrak from Advanced Field Solutions, is based on O2 XDA devices. Using the devices, engineers can get a call description and customer history. “They click to say they’ve arrived, fill in details of what they’ve done and get a signature from the customer,” Breen explains. As for the return on investment, he claims that Qualcomm’s call rate “was up 25 per cent over a six month period” using the technology.
The sales team, by contrast, have notebooks, so they can work from home and the office. A number of them use 3G cards and most of them also have Blackberry devices to access email on the move and respond quickly.
Deli Meats which operates a food distribution business in Dublin for convenience store chains, forecourts and the hospitality industry, is another company that relies on mobility. With a mobile sales and delivery workforce, it needs to control perishable stock, some of which could have a shelf life as low as one day.
Using OutTrak mobile software from CCS, Deli Meats has been given the ability to get real time management of the movement of stock and cash. It has also been able to eliminate the paperwork associated with the management of the stock by capturing and sending all information, including electronic signatures, using HP Ipaq 6340 handheld devices in ruggedised cases.
According to CCS, an OutTrak deployment can result in a 22% reduction in delivery costs after one year.
Sean Casey, operations manager at Deli Meats. is “delighted with the price and performance” of the Ipaqs. “Two or three years ago, this type of device would have set us back €2-2500. The complete system has helped us reduce our cost of delivery, drive up sales and most importantly improve the service to our customers.”
An intriguing solution based on HP Ipaqs was implemented by Rathaus Café in Zurich in Switzerland. It was having difficulty serving customers on the terrace quickly and efficiently in busy periods. To overcome the problem, Rauthaus opted for a wireless PDA network based on two wireless Ipaqs and specialist software. Waiters and waitresses can now stay on the terrace and send orders to the bar via the wireless network and a bill is printed out automatically. Manager Christopher Eckstein claims the system has halved the average time taken to deliver an orders to a customer’s table. It has also eradicated the problem of customers not being billed for everything they bought at busy times. Eckstein believes the solution will pay for itself in under two years through a combination of faster service and more accurate billing.
Another interesting use of mobile technology is provided by Tougher Oil Distributors, a specialist in home heating oil, petroleum, retail, hospitality and property in Kildare, Carlow, Wicklow, Laois and South Dublin City and County. The company, which has 200 employees, five bulk oil depots, 35 trucks, 10 forecourts/shops, two restaurants and a business park, wanted to gain real time access to live video feeds from CCTV cameras from anywhere and at anytime in the event of an alarm being activated. Tougher’s CCTV provider, Temple Sales, developed a solution using Vodafone’s 3G networks to provide real time access to CCTV cameras using 3G phones.
Business development manager Joe Fraser estimates he is saving two days travel time per month by being able to directly access real-time CCTV video on his mobile phone and “making faster more accurate decisions” in the process. “If an alarm goes off in the middle of the night I can view all the CCTV cameras onsite on my mobile and make the appropriate decisions regarding escalation and actions. At a minimum, it saves me unnecessary journeys and qualifies alarms before bringing in the Gardai.”
Not only can users view real time live images via the Temple Digital CCTV System, they can also access the system functions to view history, activate and deactivate the alarm system, or open and close doors. It can also be set up to notify a user’s mobile phone when there is activity in selected grids of the CCTV system.
What the above examples demonstrate is that mobile working is much wider than the commonly held stereotype of sales reps with laptops. There is a rich and diverse range of activities which can be served by mobile technology, be it notebooks, PDAs or mobile phones. Advances in mobile technology are likely to increase the range of possibilities for companies, large and small, in the future. They might not all be walking the walk, but a lot of them could find themselves increasingly mobile in the days to come.
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