Breaking the chains to the desk

In the end, the hardware doesn't matter, however many bells, whistles, cameras or MP3 players a phone or PDA or laptop has. What matters to the user are the applications - what can they do for us.

A mobile workforce means breaking down some of the customs which have kept us chained to desks in offices in central business districts and suburban industrial zones.

It involves cultural change, understanding what is necessary and stripping out the unnecessary. Then we go back to the technology to enable these new processes.

Tony Fitzgerald of Portables Plus, immediate past president of the Wireless Data Forum, says in the past six months the mobile market has taken off dramatically.

"It is now becoming normal in business. The mobile market is driven by solutions," Fitzgerald says. "Email has taken off because screens have got larger so you can actually read things on them now, and the costs are not that high."

He says there's a growing number of solutions to choose for linking service and sales people in the field back to their offices.

The choice of device often depends on the application - cards for laptops, smartphones, Windows-based devices like the Harrier, Blueberries for pure email solutions, the Palm Treo.

There are a lot of bundles coming back into the market which bring down to cost of the phone if you sign up for a long-term plan.

"Companies are looking at efficiency, not price," Fitzgerald says. "The service applications are good because they allow service staff to bill on the spot. The system picks up what parts they use through the day, and a box of replacement parts will be waiting on their doorstep before they set out in the morning."

He says many of the applications have been picked up and rebadged by Telecom and Vodafone.

"A lot of the applications developers are small and don't have big marketing budgets to get out there. The forum is trying to help them with that," Fitzgerald says.

One of the more established wireless data solution providers is Rocom.

When it moved into its harbourside offices three years ago, the place was buzzing with staff.

Now the office looks like a neutron bomb has gone off, and it's not just because the company has fewer staff after a listing, a delisting and a management buy-out.

"We don't want our people in the office, we want them out with customers," says chief executive Grant Crawshay.

Rocom does that by using some of the tools it sells to run its own business.

Service calls go through Message Master Enterprise Alert, which sends out an SMS message to the mobile phone of the service person most suitable for the job.

If they don't reply in a certain time, or decline the job, the call immediately switches to the next person on the list.

Crawshay says the system is also used to send out sales leads so potential customers are contacted as quickly as possible.

Enterprise Alert, which is made by German mobility software firm Derdack, also supports email and paging.

What makes it particularly effective for firms is another bit of Derdack technology which sits behind it, Mobility Proxy. This connects mobile device applications with back office data.

"Mobility proxy means we don't need to go to the carriers to get a fixed IP address for each mobile, which adds more cost," Crawshay says.

Derdack takes care of everything relating to mobile network standards and integrating with all the various back office systems.

It also supplies a Microsoft .Net development kit so resellers like Rocom can quickly build applications for customers.

"We can go into a spreadsheet, an Access or SQL database, Oracle, anything we can put an sql query to, so we are independent of back office systems," says Crawshay.

Where possible, Rocom tries to avoid customised solutions, preferring packages which can be quickly configured to meet a company's needs.

What it does insist on is customers budgeting for training.

"With smartphones and Pocket PCs, training is an issue. People in New Zealand resent putting money in for training, but it is essential," Crawshay says.

He says the early adopters of mobile communications technologies, companies such as Cookietime, got a huge advantage out of hosted applications like Saleslink, but it took a while for the rest of the market to make the leap.

"We are seeing the second wave now. People have to comprehend what the business advantage is.

"Email is a good taster, and then firms look at applications like Saleslink."

On behalf of Australian firm Veratar Technologies, Rocom developed Smart Merchandiser as a smartphone management and data collection system for merchandisers, those people who go round and restock brands in supermarkets and dairies.

As well as giving the merchandiser their daily task list and price sheets, the tool allows them to conduct shelf audits, do in-store surveys, check compliance and send photographs of the product on the shelves.

From the data sent back to the server, the brand owner is able to keep the merchandiser stocked, check performance and analyse sales trends and other trade intelligence, as well as interface to the billing systems.

Because the server is only logging changes, there is not a lot of data exchanged so it runs very fast, Crawshay says.

He says the product, which costs between $2000 and $3000 a user depending on the number of users, is selling well in Australia, although New Zealand companies seem slow.

"It allows firms to get rid of a layer of managers who used to manage merchandisers. It is now much easier to see what a person in the field is doing," he says.

Saleslink continues to be popular with firms doing field sales or deliveries.

Soft drink maker Phoenix Organic has sales people in trucks around Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch using Saleslink to keep track of deliveries.

Chief financial officer Peter Bonkovich says the reps can take an order on their Palms or Treos while they are in a shop, restaurant or cafe, then hook up to a printer in the truck while they fill the order.

That creates the invoice, which becomes proof of delivery.

"The Auckland reps tend to download the orders at the end of the day, but the guys out of Auckland send them immediately via cellphone," Bonkovich says.

"They can check inventory and see any pricing changes or customer information they need."

He says the amount of time reps spend at each site has come down, because they don't need to hand-write paper invoices.

It also speeds up payment, because the shop or cafe has an invoice in hand when the goods are delivered, rather than receiving one by post or fax days later.

"It eliminates a lot of the paper war that tends to consume business," he says.