You want to use a B2B-W application only when the balance of urgency against inconvenience merits it. Either the urgency is great?hence the existence of wireless trading applications?or the convenience is superior, as in my pub manager example.

Gotta Start Somewhere

Maybe companies will start with the ultimate in convenience: the fully automatic wireless application, such as a wireless device that broadcasts where a pallet is all the time. Right now, of course, most locator software uses older radio frequency technology, but you know that improvements in wireless are coming. Nonauto-matic B2B-W ought to come more slowly because it seems that most such applications would have to be written especially for wireless. Otherwise, they’d be too inconvenient.

One global (but U.S.-based) consumer packaged goods company that I know of looks to be a good test case. Its IT folks are planning to build wireless applications that will allow owners of small convenience stores to use handheld devices to order their products, instead of phoning in or faxing orders. They’ll start, they’ve said, with a region where wireless-based ordering offers significant cost or convenience advantages over landline communication?Brazil is currently at the head of the pack.

But will it work? It’s a test case that deserves careful attention, if only because any outcome is sure to leave one party?either the company or the store owners?twiddling their thumbs.

David Dobrin is president of B2B Analysts in Cambridge, Mass. His opinions have aired on highways and byways from S‹o Paulo to Mumbai.