CPS Energy currently employs approximately 3,660 people; more than half are domestic mobile or field workers doing construction, excavation and other manual labor. In 2006, when Magellan was initially launched, just 300 staffers had been equipped with smartphones, and most of them were office workers. Today, more than half of the entire workforce has BlackBerry or Windows Mobile devices and access to a plethora of corporate data.

For Barron, the first and most significant challenge in deploying smartphones to such a large user base was getting executive buy-in.

"One of our biggest headaches has been, and continues to be, the perception that the technology brings little to the table other than e-mail, and it costs a lot," Barron says.

So Barron did some research on device and carrier pricing and presented a business case demonstrating that new BlackBerrys and other high-end smartphones don't cost the $400 or $500 that they once did. Barron explained that the devices were, in fact, so cheap that CPS could afford to do some "innovative experimenting," as he puts it.

CPS selected AT&T to be its sole wireless carrier for a number of reasons—not the least of which was the fact that AT&T was also located in San Antonio—the company has since shifted its headquarters to Dallas—and its proximity made communication particularly simple. AT&T also made the BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices "practically free" along with service contracts, according to Barron. And the carrier's coverage map was suitable, as the vast majority of CPS's workers travelled only to major U.S. cities with strong AT&T wireless service.

"For a CIO to try to eliminate all the resistance from a senior executive might take forever," Barron says. "So rather than try to get to the execs and mollify all their fears about cost, usage and safety, we've gone to specific groups, engineers, line workers, office workers, and because it's so cheap we've been able to give the devices out on 'experimental basis.'"

"There's so much value in these handheld devices and two or three applications that they prove themselves," he says. "You just have to get them into the hands of the people that actually need to use them in order to demonstrate that."

CPS has spent approximately $1 million on the Magellan Program since 2006, but less than 20 percent of that amount has been dedicated to the smartphone deployment. More than half of that cash has been dedicated smartphone-infrastructure and application-development fees. Still, Barron says, the cost of keeping smartphones up and running is a mere tenth of what it costs to keep a PC maintained.

Innovative Experimenting With Digital Cameras and More

Three innovative ways CPS staffers employ their smartphones are as digital cameras at work sites, as GPS tracking mechanisms and as emergency notification receivers—though Barron is quick to note that the subject of GPS tracking is a touchy one and the GPS app is now only in pilot testing.

In the past, CPS might've had to dispatch a small group of "generalist" workers to a service call to make sure the correct person was there. Today, a single worker can visit a site, take a photo of damaged piece of equipment or infrastructure, and then send it back to headquarters or the office. Then an expert diagnoses the issue and sends along instructions to fix the problem or dispatches the appropriate worker—who's available immediately via voice, e-mail and SMS text via smartphone.

Though the company's internally-developed GPS tracking app is being used sparingly, CPS has the ability to keep tabs on its smartphone users and sync up timesheets to verify that workers were where they claimed to be, Barron says.

Barron says neither GPS nor a digital camera is required in a smartphone, but he sees no reasons not have the features in the all the devices his staffers employ. In fact, all the company's smartphones have GPS and most have cameras, he says.

CPS also created its own emergency notification system that can send alerts via e-mail, as well as text messages to warn workers of bad weather, dangerous conditions or other emergencies. Because many staffers have e-mail inboxes jammed with messages and may not check them as often as they could, Barron says SMS text is the most commonly used delivery option.