CIO —
By Alvaro Pombo
So, you’ve decided to go wireless. After doing the research and looking at others’ successes, you’re confident that arming your field workers with the right mobile solutions beyond e-mail can increase their productivity and reduce your operational costs. With the compelling economics of such a move, you expect a measured improvement in your company’s top and bottom line. But how do you make it happen? What is the best way to go mobile beyond e-mail? Both outsourcing this process and building a customized in-house solution offer advantages and disadvantages. It’s important to consider a number of issues to help you make the right choice for your organization in the short and long term.
The first of many steps to make your mobile project happen is to define the needs of your business and specify which operational processes you want to improve. For example, you may want to allow mobile professionals the ability to interact with work order systems while in the field. Or you may want to have new and updated “content” automatically pushed to these employees so that they always have the latest work-specific information, such as price sheets, installation manuals or sales collateral at their disposal.
Another example of an operational process you may want to improve is mobilizing structured data. You may want to enable your mobile workers to collect work-related information by filling in forms on their mobile devices and submitting these forms wirelessly to the head office. This will allow them to avoid the hassles associated with using paper forms, such as commuting to and from the office to drop off forms and having to pay clerks to enter the information into corporate databases, applications and systems.
Factors to Consider
Once you know what goals you want to achieve you can start thinking about the various components of the wireless solution. These include the mobile device, the wireless service provider, the software platform and applications, the hosting, the back-office integration, the system implementation and rollout, and finally the ongoing system management.
Mobile Device
The most obvious component of a wireless solution is the mobile device. The issues you should consider when selecting the mobile devices for your wireless solution are:
- What are the best device form factors, brands, models and costs given the features required for your particular deployment?
- Which wireless networks can these devices operate on? Do you need wide area wireless connectivity, Wi-Fi, or will a cradle connection to a PC suffice?
- Where is the best place to source your preferred devices? Direct from the manufacturer? Or via a retailer, VAR or wireless service provider?
- How can you negotiate volume discounts and favorable payment terms?
