CHICAGO-When Bridget Glavaz touched down in Los Angeles recently, she pulled out her handheld computer, a Palm VII, and started addressing two critical issues. She needed directions to her appointment downtown, so she logged onto Mapquest.com. Equally important, she wanted a hot hazelnut mocha, so she linked to Starbucks.com, where she discovered that a friendly server was in the next terminal.
Ah, the miracles of modern mobile technology.
“When you get ready to go on a trip, you don’t leave home without it,” said Glavaz, director of corporate communications for OAG, a travel information company based in Oak Brook, Ill.
In airport terminals across the country, and on busy Chicago streets, mobile business people like Glavaz are using the latest electronic tools to do their jobs more quickly, easily and productively.
They can be seen checking their calendars or writing memos on PalmPilots and other handheld personal digital assistants, nervously checking their pagers while reaching for their cellular telephones to check stock prices, hammering out e-mail on their laptop computers, even navigating unfamiliar territory using a portable satellite navigator.
“The big thing people are looking for is small, portable interconnectivity,” said Paul Kozak, vice-president of purchasing for CDW Computer Centers Inc., headquartered in Vernon Hills, Ill. That means using any item that can help them connect wirelessly to the office, clients, family and friends while on the road.
Since CDW sells more than 53,000 electronic products, adding some 200 new items daily, Kozak is well-positioned to see what mobile business people are demanding.
Take Glavaz. In addition to her Palm VII, she carries a Sprint cell phone and an IBM ThinkPad laptop. Since she travels a lot and works for a company that publishes airline flight schedules online, Glavaz can use any piece of her equipment to reach oag.com to see if her plane is on time.
“A few weeks ago, I got in a limo and the driver said, `Did you check your flight? I heard there were delays at O’Hare.’ So I pulled up the Web site on my Sprint phone and found out the flight was on time. The limo driver said, `How did you do that?'” Glavaz said.
While these newfangled gadgets may mystify novices, experienced users regard them as second nature.
“To me, mobility computing is the normal course of doing business. I sort of take it for granted,” said Rory Herriman, director of telecommunications for Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears, Roebuck and Co., a 114-year-old retailer that once delivered goods by horse-drawn wagon.
Herriman supplies Sears’ mobile workers with pagers, cell phones and laptop computers as they travel the world visiting suppliers, trade shows and the retailer’s 860 full-line and 2,100 specialty stores. He says he is heartened to see buyers using their laptops with a wireless phone link to dial into the company’s network to place orders and field-based managers using cell phones to check their e-mail.
“I’m surprised to see how quickly people are catching on,” Herriman said. “People are coming to me for the technology; I’m not pushing it out to them.”
In fact, most workers concede that the pleasures of mobile technology whet their appetites for more.
Michael Provenzale has a smorgasbord of equipment in his job as director of information technology for Oak Brook-based DeVry Inc., which operates for-profit colleges.
Some 3,200 students and 200 faculty and staff rely on Provenzale to make sure the computers, networks and phones are working during the 100-plus hours per week that the three Chicago-area DeVry campuses are open.
When he isn’t physically there, Provenzale stays connected with work using a Motorola cell phone and a PageNet pager. When the telephone rings at his desk, he is automatically paged, then his cell phone rings, alerting him that a message has been left on his voice-mail.
“The campus is open seven days a week. I can’t be there all the time, but it’s my responsibility to make sure things are working. So these items are a necessity,” Mr. Provenzale said.
Forty staff members also can reach Provenzale remotely through his Gateway laptop or Hewlett-Packard handheld. He can use them to dial into the network to answer his e-mail.
This summer, Provenzale was aboard his boat when the company’s network server crashed. Answering a page, he used his handheld and cell phone to communicate with his staff until the problem was corrected.
Provenzale has even used technology for directions. Boating last summer on a remote lake in Ontario, he became lost at sunset. So he pulled out his Garmin GPS3, a portable global positioning system device, which signaled a satellite to find his location and guide him to shore.
“It was like following a bread crumb trail,” says Provenzale, who also uses the device on business trips.
With all the buzz about wireless communication, cellular service providers are adding new products to meet the demand.
Chicago-based U.S. Cellular Corp., for example, recently launched a nationwide rate plan that eliminates roaming and long-distance charges. It also completed a wireless Internet experiment in Medford, Ore., that allowed cellular customers to dial up local information such as restaurant guides and movie listings. The provider plans to introduce similar service in cities nationwide.
“There is continued demand for enhanced wireless service because people don’t want to be tethered to one location,” said David Friedman, vice-president of marketing for U.S. Cellular.
Sprint PCS, for example, offers a package called Wireless Web for Business. It offers enhanced Internet service with a 56K connection, up from 14.4K; improved network and e-mail services, and new wireless modems that allow laptops to dial up the Net without hooking up to a cell phone.
“Since we launched Sprint PCS Wireless Web one year ago, our business accounts have grown by 285 percent,” says Keith Paglusch, senior vice-president of operations for the Kansas City, Mo.-based company. “We added these services because our business customers asked for them.”
Mr. Paglusch uses Sprint’s mobile communications capabilities for business and personal work. When he’s at the airport and finds his flight has been canceled, he uses his cell phone to book a new flight on the Internet while he watches fellow passengers stand in line at the reservations counter.
John T. Slania is a reporter for RCR Wireless News sister publication Crain’s Chicago Business.
