British American Tobacco is poised to connect Blackberry
mobile devices to its core business systems, including SAP, as part
of a project to allow 900 senior executives to place purchase
orders and access management information on the move.
The company, which is among the first organisations to use
Blackberries extensively for applications other than e-mail,
believes that it can save senior staff at its London headquarters
up to 55 minutes a day by enabling them to perform financial
transactions and access corporate information during "dead time" on
the move.
"It is very easy to show a return on investment," said David
Sampson, head of IT at BAT's headquarters. "The ability of
executives to access e-mail and information sources to carry out
management transactions wherever they find themselves, be it in
Rio, New Zealand or Canada, is key."
BAT plans to roll out the system in five stages over the next 12
months. These will include enabling executives to browse the BAT
intranet securely and linking Blackberry servers to the corporate
SAP system to allow managers to place orders and view
information.
The company plans to offer the Blackberries to up to 900 members
of staff, ranging from executives who spend most of their time
travelling, to deskbound managers who could benefit from having the
ability to work outside of the office.
"The number-one advantage is being able to make use of dead
time. All our executives report that it is useful to be able to
access information from the airport. The other aspect is giving
people a choice about where and how they work," said Sampson.
He said one of the challenges would be integrating the
Blackberry servers with BAT's SAP systems using a variety of
interfaces and middleware.
The company has also invested in back-up systems to ensure that
the Blackberry service remains in operation in the event of system
failure or planned maintenance work.
BAT has worked with disaster recovery supplier
Neverfail to install back-up systems that provide a
seamless failover in the event of a system going down. The
company tested the system in April during a project to update power
supplies at its headquarters.
However, Sampson said the biggest challenge was winning the
hearts and minds of the end-users. This meant conducting extensive
research into how staff used their Blackberries and what functions
they needed outside the office.
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>>
BAT website
>>
Blackberry website >>
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