Owing to Arch’s numerous products, multiple service options and high sales volume, placing orders was time consuming and expensive. Salespeople would either phone in orders to a call center or write them down and enter the information into a computer once they returned to the office. This process often produced errors, causing the billing system to reject more than 10 percent of orders. Rejected orders forced service people, sales representatives and customers into a reverification cycle that cost even more time and money.

Faced with mounting competition from the likes of Metrocall, SkyTel and Verizon, Schmersahl bet that the answer was allowing the sales team to interact with customer information and enter orders while on the go.

Mobile Move

That bet paid off, but not without facing a few hurdles. For instance, Arch had to overcome the problem of getting existing data ready for display on screen-and-bandwidth-limited mobile devices. Fortunately, companies today have a variety of options for how to do that.

The techniques for transforming mobile data vary widely in complexity and cost. Companies simply looking to relay text or existing Web-based information to mobile workers, for example, could choose a wireless application service provider (WASP), such as Aether Systems or 724 Solutions. These companies use transcoders (also called Web scrapers) to skim the basic information from a website and make it accessible on a wireless device.

If a company plans to move beyond basic information sharing, however, a WASP probably isn’t the answer. Updating databases, conducting transactions and interacting with CRM applications require a more sophisticated approach?often involving custom programming.

Arch, for instance, decided to make sales-related portions of its back-office data available on the mobile devices. To make sure that the information on the wireless systems was continually up-to-date, it contracted with Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Mobilize and Wellesley, Mass.-based Orchid Systems to extend back-end applications and manage data between the wireless units and the back-office database. Arch found it easier to go with a third-party vendor because the company didn’t have the resources in-house to dedicate to the job.

The Death of Cool