As Microsoft enters the push e-mail arena, business
users have emphasised that the main benefit of mobile technologies
is to give end-users access to line-of-business applications when
they are off-site.
Alan Powell, IS director of Hanover Housing Association, said
his business mobile applications benefited all staff who needed to
collect information face to face with clients or customers, or
those conducting structural or street surveys. “The key is to look
at your business processes and see where double entry is occurring
or there is paper data capture.”
Ruth Rosenthal, director of IT at Age Concern, said that for a
charity such as hers, which provides care and alarm services to
older people, “the ability to monitor someone using a handheld
device, to have immediate access to medical history, medication
used and other related data would be invaluable”.
Jenny Sener, director of ICT at property support services group
OCS, said her company had, over the past 18 months, found benefit
in rolling out mobile data solutions to support managers and
operational staff to deliver business support services to
customers.
For the first group of knowledge workers, who rely on e-mail,
diary and contact management, she said OCS had rolled out
Blackberry successfully 18 months ago, providing synchronisation
with office-based Microsoft Outlook systems through Blackberry
Enterprise Server 4.0.
Sener said the business benefit of the system was that it
constantly pushed information in real time to key workers, so
customer and business issues could be resolved more quickly and
efficiency.
“The ability to push detailed information to this community
while they are remote from the office in the UK and abroad reduces
the costs of mobile phone calls to resolve issues or pass
information,” she added.