Mobile and Wireless Field Force Automation Solutions

Summary:

With the passing of each competition-charged day, the corporate IT mandate grows clearer. Successful companies know that a well-trained, highly motivated and efficiently connected field force is critical to their continued growth and success

Table of Contents:

Mobile and Wireless Field Force Automation Solutions
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With the passing of each competition-charged day, the corporate IT mandate grows clearer. Successful companies know that a well-trained, highly motivated and efficiently connected field force is critical to their continued growth and success. To compete and win, sales, marketing, tech support, customer service, repair, and other field staff must have anywhere, anytime access to corporate data and applications using any device. The bottom-line benefits of empowering your field force with the information they need, when and where they need it, include:

• Dramatic boosts in field force productivity

• The ability to deliver extraordinary customer service

• Increased customer loyalty

• A competitive edge defined by the ability to close business or solve customer problems on the spot

• Reduced total cost of ownership due to deployment of smaller form factor devices and reduced connection costs

• Improved inventory management

• Reduced administrative costs

• Expedited billing and cash flow

Across every industry group mobile and wireless field force automation solutions are delivering significant results like these. In financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, retail and hospitality, transportation, public sector and more, these solutions are tilting the playing field in favor of organizations with the foresight to implement them. With a quarter of all corporate workers already connecting to their networks from remote locations, and with that number expected to grow dramatically over the next few years, the message is unmistakable: mobile and wireless e-Business, or m-Business, solutions are a critical success factor. The question, then, is not whether to implement m-Business solutions, but rather how to implement them.

m-Business Platform: A Foundation for Successful Field Force Automation Solutions
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A good m-Business platform provides mobile workers with “always available” access to their data and applications. As a result, workers remain highly productive by working either on or offline, accessing the information they need, when they need it. They can execute transactions in real time, or queue them up offline to reduce communications costs while increasing application and battery performance.

A solid m-Business Platform includes:

• The market-leading data management and enterprise synchronization technologies to enable the rapid development and deployment of distributed e-Business solutions for workgroups, laptops, handhelds, and intelligent appliances.

• A comprehensive, integrated software platform for extending the reach of e-Business applications, enterprise data and Internet content to mobile and wireless devices. This platform provides the core foundation necessary for conducting mobile and wireless e-Business, or "m-Business", while managing the risk and reducing the costs and development times typically associated with successful efforts. Mobile workers gain the unique ability to work either on or offline so they have "always available" access to their data and corporate applications.

Best of breed Solutions also offers a customizable framework on which to build industry-specific m-Business applications to help speed development of solutions. The bottom line: By automating what has been traditionally a paper-based process, organizations benefit from enhanced productivity, reduced redundancy and fewer errors.

Using proper open technology and services to develop and deploy your m-Business applications, you’ll realize dramatic results including:

• Faster time to market with reduced risk

• Reduced development and deployment costs

• Fast, reliable access to up-to-date information at lower cost

• Ability to close business and solve customer problems on the spot

• Protection of your existing IT investments

• Ability to scale to support both field force growth and the increasing number of network connected devices

• Ability to extend your corporate portal to mobile users working on a variety of PCs, handhelds and other computing devices

With competition growing fiercer each day, companies that can arm their sales representatives with timely information on customers, prospects, competitors and market trends stand the best chance to win, retain and increase business.

Quotable Quotes:
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META Group expects more than 75% of knowledge workers to be mobile (on the road, at home, remote office, etc.) at least 25% of the time by 2003/2004. (Jack Gold, META Group, “Entering the Mobile Millennium”, February 14, 2000).

"33% of IT executives currently use wireless information appliances and 29% will begin using wireless technology within the next 2 years."

2000 HIMSS Leadership Survey

Companies that fail to enable wireless extensions during the next 12-18 months risk losing customers to competitors that do. Most will require assistance in developing mobile extensions, as they lack the required resources and technical expertise.