As a growing number of companies make efforts to take their workforces mobile, new stories are emerging as to how companies are actually making use of wireless technology in the real world. Claims adjusters and utility companies already are well-known for making use of wireless technology, but a myriad of other types of companies-from hospitals to government agencies to companies offering janitorial services-are getting in on the act as well.
At the recent CTIA I.T. Wireless and Entertainment 2006 show in Los Angeles, Cingular Wireless L.L.C.’s Jeff Bradley, vice president of business data services, said that four factors are contributing to an increase in companies looking at mobility solutions:
- Mass adoption of wireless e-mail;
- Pervasive availability of integrated devices;
- 3G network access on a global scale; and
- Business process enablement.
Adidas Group has worked with Cingular to mobilize its 200-member sales workforce, Bradley said. Workers used to have to input order data at an office work station and only had access to customer databases while at a desktop terminal. However, once Adidas issued Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerries to its sales employees to use for exchanging e-mail, the door opened for other possibilities.
Adidas, Bradley related, ended up with a wireless solution with a variety of form-based applications. Workers traveling to stores that sold Adidas products could place orders and check their status, look up records of customer activity and pull product photographs and UPC codes.
Cleaners
Coverall, an international cleaning franchiser, also has found that form-based applications were an easy way to become more efficient. The company worked with mobile application platform provider mFoundry to develop a solution that allowed paper-based questionnaires to be filled out and transmitted wirelessly. The change meant that supervisors could more quickly communicate whether cleaning crews had done an adequate job, resulting in Coverall saving about $500,000 per year, according to Drew Sievers, chief executive officer of mFoundry.
News
News agencies are finding that mobility is particularly important to their employees, and can reduce the need to send out reporting teams with costly equipment.
Sprint Nextel Corp. announced earlier this year that it had partnered with the Associated Press so that AP reporters could use the carrier’s CDMA2000 1x EV-DO network to send broadcast-quality video back to newsrooms. The transfer required an AP application called Snapfeed along with a laptop computer, compatible camera and a Sprint Nextel mobile broadband PC card. The carrier also noted that government agencies and emergency services could lease the Snapfeed technology in order to make use of the application.
“By greatly reducing the potential costs involved in transferring video remotely/wirelessly and freeing up the journalist to focus on editorial responsibilities, broadcasters become more competitive,” Sprint Nextel claimed.
Reuters, which delivers news and financial information, also has equipped its journalists with equipment designed to help with efficient remote reporting: digital cameras and audio recorders along with laptops that can transmit data wirelessly, as well as satellite telephones, according to an account by Reuters editor-in-chief Geert Innebank in the book “Connected Workforce.”
Innebank said that rather than equipping a few large teams with heavy, expensive equipment, the use of mobile reporting is not only cheaper but “it also means the reporter can get access to places and stories that would have simply been too expensive or logistically difficult to cover in the past.”
The AP also announced earlier this month that it partnered with Crisp Wireless to provide a white-label mobile application that it will license to other news outlets so that they can offer national election results from this fall’s midterm elections to their subscribers. The AP Mobile Election Results service will be accessible through mobile-phone browsers.
“It’s certainly an application that’s very different from the ringtones and wallpapers and all the things that appeal to kids,” said Boris Fridman, CEO of Crisp Wireless. “This application just shows that there’s some level of maturity in the mobile space, that now we’re seeing applications and content that appeals to a significantly different audience.”
Fridman said that there has been strong interest from news organizations, which will be able to re-brand the application as their own and offer it to their consumers. The application, he added, easily can be integrated into other mobile offerings that a news organization might have.
Fridman said he expects to see more use of syndicated applications by media companies, and that companies will be likely to apply content models that they’ve used on the Internet or in print: offering weather information provided by The Weather Channel, or photographs that might be their own or from other news syndicates.
“What we’re seeing is the same approach and techniques in usage online are now being brought into mobile and successfully utilized,” Fridman said.
