Case study: Gobi plays key role in CMG's mobile solution

Contrary to popular opinion, magazine readership is growing and remains an important driver of retail sales and profit. With more than 4,000 titles in the market, it’s difficult for any publisher or title to stand above the rest. Since 2001, Comag Marketing Group LLC (CMG) has helped the world’s leading magazine brands stand out with comprehensive sales, marketing and promotional services through a network of sales venues.
Headquartered in Princeton, NJ, CMG employs roughly 400 people, including a mobile workforce of over 180 in the United States and Canada. This mobile workforce—CMG’s merchandisers—is required to perform in-store checks, ensuring magazines are properly presented at thousands of retail establishments. It also provides merchandising services at airport newsstands throughout the United States.
In 2003, CMG deployed Symbol handheld devices to support its airport staff, which did not prove to be a robust long-term solution. The closed nature of the device lacked flexibility and the ability to directly integrate with CMG’s corporate systems. The remaining merchandising staff used either a “bubble form” to collect in-store data—mailing forms in on a weekly basis—or performed manual checks, entering the data into spreadsheets on consumer-grade laptops and emailing them for processing.
Due to poor ergonomics and functionality, these laptops were not taken into the stores. Even though the notebooks were not being used in a true mobile capacity, CMG still dealt with a significant amount of hardware failures, requiring the company’s IT Department to stock 15-20 spare devices.
In addition, data collected in the field took several weeks to be processed and reviewed. For CMG, the latency between data collection and actionable use was no longer acceptable. In order to be a better partner to its customers, latency needed to be reduced from weeks to hours. In an effort to create a new solution that would radically improve this process, CMG began its “Remote Data Collection” project. Primary objectives included replacing the three disparate data collection processes with one, eliminating the need for dual entry or additional steps in the data collection process, aggregating and exposing relevant in-store product information, and reducing the reporting lifecycle from weeks to hours.
One of CMG’s key objectives during the roll-out of 180 Toughbook mobile computers for its Remote Data Collection project to its national workforce was to provide fast and reliable wireless broadband connectivity throughout entire shifts. This objective was crucial to achieve as Internet access enabled the workforce to provide near real-time updates on inventory, scans and orders to headquarters – a radical improvement over the current industry reporting paradigm of 3-4 weeks. In addition, the IT Team needed to ensure maximum uptime for the workers and to virtually eliminate notebook failures due to unreliable connectivity equipment, such as external PC Card modems.
Finally, the IT Team also needed to improve the connectivity of the mobile workforce that would receive Toughbook U1 handheld computers. This group previously needed to dock the old handheld device to a dial-up modem once returning to their home offices.
Trac2Mobile, the reseller that played a critical role in the Toughbook solution deployment, suggested the new Gobi ™ embedded broadband solution from Qualcomm. Gobi is the first multi-mode embedded wireless solution for mobile computers. It brings two incompatible 3G wireless technologies – CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. A and W-CDMA/HSPA – together into one software-defined configuration that enables users to connect to the best available wireless network. In addition to considering the Gobi chip, CMG tested the major U.S. carriers, conducting a coverage analysis based on their mobile workforce’s location. Following this step, the company selected two carriers for their deployment.
Now, Gobi chips embedded in all of the Toughbook solutions provide reliable and fast Internet access for CMG, enabling its workforce to send and receive data in a timely manner through its Remote Data Collection system. This drastically improves the company’s reporting lifecycle, reducing the previous 3 to 4 weeks to near real-time updates and providing CMG with a distinct competitive advantage.
With Gobi, unlike with external broadband cards or carrier-specific internal modems, the IT department is now able to order a single SKU for the national, wirelessly-connected mobile workforce and select a carrier of choice based on the best geographical coverage. With a select number of remote workers, the IT Team is able to access the modems and make modifications remotely, without ever having to physically take the units from the workers, ultimately allowing for the greatest level of efficiency.
In addition, the ability to transmit real-time training or perform ad-hoc webinars, at near broadband speeds, provides substantial benefits to the overall success of the solution. Thanks to the carriers’ in-depth reporting tools, CMG can monitor month-to-month usage of wireless accounts by user to see individuals’ rates of adoption, and can then adjust their data plans accordingly.
Prior to Gobi, CMG’s wireless activation was at 15% and it fielded 4 trouble-shooting calls per month from mobile workers with activated embedded wireless. This was partly due to hardware failures, such as motherboard crashes, caused by external PC Card Modems. Now, with the 100% embedded wireless broadband through Gobi activation, the company’s IT team handled only nine calls in the past eight months. This brings the average number down to 1.125% per month – a drop of nearly 75% – while increasing wireless activation by 85%. This represents a radical reduction in wireless issues, stemming from the use of a carrier-agnostic embedded solution.
For CMG’s customers, access to near-real time data at the in-store level helped to maximize financial investments, making CMG a more valuable business partner. In the publishing market, access to this type of business intelligence is critical to success.
Shifting data access time from weeks to just hours sets CMG apart from its competition. Before deploying Gobi-enabled Toughbook solutions, information was only available for historical trending, because titles were often off the shelf by the time the information was available. Now, CMG has the ability to help customers improve revenue by turning restocking into a more viable possibility.
Also, through the company’s Remote Data Collection platform, a single application easily integrates with the corporate CRM System, making management much easier for the IT team.
The reliability of the Toughbook solutions has been one of the key benefits for the successful deployment. CMG no longer keeps a replacement inventory. The company only has one Toughbook mobile computer per 100 field users in reserve and no spare mobile broadband cards. Compared to the 15-20 laptops and broadband cards they previously had to keep on the shelf, this is a significant reduction that eases IT management needs. In the first seven months of deployment the field workforce had not experienced a single hardware failure.
Additional benefits CMG has realized through its Toughbook-based solution include:
• Improved remote training capabilities via wireless broadband
• Increased visibility into wireless data usage—to help maximize field use
• Enhanced connectivity through Gobi—eliminating unpredictable costs associated with usage of Wi-Fi hotspots and home DSL
• Improved ergonomics—for easier handling, travel and transport
• Extended battery life—to enable full-shift use without recharging
With this new solution in place, CMG is well positioned to help its customers stay competitive, making the company a valuable business partner in a very competitiv
e market.