Cheap, ubiquitous and reliable access to
mobile communications is changing the way businesses operate.
The first mobile phones were expensive, heavy and offered only poor
coverage in buildings and outside cities they were more executive
toys than real business tools.
But over the past decade, the mobile phone industry has
undergone nothing short of a revolution. The move to
second-generation digital networks turned a gadget for the few into
a communications tool for the many, and now 93% of Britons have a
mobile device, according to research firm Analysys.
But for businesses at least, the mobile world is moving into its
second, and arguably even more revolutionary, phase.
The first and second generation of mobile devices were strongly
focused on voice, with only a small percentage of businesses making
use of
text messaging and an even smaller number trying the first
generation of mobile data cards to connect laptops to the internet
or to corporate networks.
But while industry observers remain uncertain about the value of
3G and 4G services such as video calling to the consumer, there is
no question that the latest generation of data networks allow both
commercial companies and public sector organisations to make real
changes to business processes by incorporating mobility.
Cheaper and more flexible mobile devices, faster data
connections - especially over
3G networks - and the falling cost of data transmission,
particularly for larger organisations, are all helping to turn
mobile devices into mainstream business tools.
These factors are also bringing significant changes to the way
CIOs approach mobile devices, and the types of applications that
they, and employees, expect to run on them.
The first application to drive large-scale adoption of mobile
data was e-mail.
Research In Motion's Blackberry has gained a loyal user base
due to its ease of use and reliability.
Several large organisations have attributed significant returns
on investment to the deployment of mobile e-mail alone. Research
from market research firm Ipsos Reid, commissioned by RIM, suggests
that a Blackberry-equipped employee can save as many as 188 working
hours a year.
However, the Blackberry remains a relatively expensive niche
product, so much so that the device itself has become something of
an executive status symbol. Alternatives, especially Microsoft
Exchange's in-built push e-mail technology, is lowering the cost
base of mobile e-mail access.
But it is difficult to build a solid business case for a mobile
enterprise strategy on the basis of e-mail access alone.
"These cases are always very difficult to prove," says Lee
Ayling, senior manager at professional-services firm Deloitte. "It
is highly subjective and there are a lot of tenuous statistics used
to prove the case."
And even RIM acknowledges that it is not e-mail, but line of
business applications, that will drive the next level of take-up
for mobile data in the enterprise.
Last autumn, the company released server technology for mobile
data system applications, allowing organisations to give mobile
workers access to back-office technology without having to deploy
mobile e-mail.
Although mobile e-mail is valuable, companies will have plenty
of staff who spend most of their working day using a small number
of very specific business tools, rather than general office
applications, e-mail or web browsing.
Applications that analysts see as critical drivers for
enterprise mobility include field service and field sales
automation, as well as access to enterprise resource planning and
customer relationship management systems.
In the public sector, local authorities and government
departments are increasingly looking to provide mobile access to
systems designed to support social workers, housing officers and
even environmental health inspectors in their day-to-day duties.
Mobile access to such applications can dramatically reduce - or in
some cases completely eliminate - trips to the office purely to
enter data into a back-office system.
"Mobile applications that are very successful include those that
support service-based roles or inspection processes, such as field
engineering, sales forces or health visitors," says Nick Jones,
vice president and distinguished analyst at analyst firm
Gartner.
"These have the clearest return on investment. Two or three
years ago it was possible to carry out these projects, but there
was a bigger pain threshold. Security on Windows Mobile, for
example, is now good enough to get many applications up and
running."
Drive Assist is a Tamworth-based company that provides temporary
replacement cars to people who have been involved in road
accidents. The company, which has an annual turnover of £150m, was
processing 120,000 paper forms a month. It has now moved to a
system based on Windows smartphones on the Vodafone network,
running specialist software from field mobility systems supplier
TBS.
According to Bob Monk, project manager at Drive Assist, half of
all staff and the whole of the sales force in the field now have
smartphones.
"From a business perspective, productivity doubled almost
immediately," says Monk. "This has enabled us to grow the business
by 65% since we launched the system two years ago, but we have only
had to increase our workforce by 10%. That is a result of the
increase in efficiency and productivity levels from the mobile
application."
Monk estimates that greater efficiency allows Drive Assist to
make 15% more use of its vehicle fleet, saving the equivalent of
£20m a year in working capital.
This is probably at the higher end of possible savings, although
smaller companies are also reporting significant returns on
investment from deploying mobile field-force applications.
Nor are line of business applications the only ones that can
benefit from mobile access. Network operator Vodafone is seeing
growing interest from its customers in mobile access to support
applications such as human resources packages, portals and
collaboration software.
"Companies have invested a lot in their internal infrastructure,
and they do not want their remote workforce to be unable to use
it," says Alex Windle, head of e-mail and applications at Vodafone
UK.
"E-mail was the first horizontal application the challenge is to
augment it with other applications on top."
Introducing mobility to business applications does present a
number of challenges, however, including technical and practical
hurdles.
Developments such as the ability to create mobile applications
in environments such as Microsoft's .net have made it easier for
organisations to develop their own software. However, analysts warn
that the mobile elements of many of the mainstream enterprise
suites still lack critical features.
None of the major ERP companies offer a comprehensive mobile
system that businesses would choose, says Jones.
"Microsoft has the tools, but does not have a library of phone
models for developers to tap into. And most corporations do not
want to start writing Symbian application programming
interfaces.
"If you look at the companies that have mobilised applications
such as SAP or
Siebel, they have done so though a multi-channel access gateway
such as Dexterra or Antenna," says Jones.
Such software will be essential for bridging the gap between
core business applications and mobile devices for some time, even
as middleware developers try to add mobility into their
offerings.
However, even if the technology is made to work smoothly,
cultural issues can also stand in the way. Some organisations have
found resistance to technologies that track employees' locations,
especially among blue-collar workers.
Other organisations found that applications were simply too
complex or failed to work with the constraints of the mobile
devices, so employees simply ignored the technology.
"It can be hard to persuade some user groups," says Richard
Hall, UK CTO at IT consultancy Avanade. "The knowledge warriors on
the road have a high appetite for facilities that are as good as,
if not better, than what they have in the office.
"Others, such as sales forces, can see the benefits of mobile
access to applications, but do not want to carry a lot of
technology to access them."
To succeed, field-based applications have to be reliable, as
well as being easy and quick to use.
The price of data connections is less of an issue - at least for
medium and larger organisations. "Pricing has become dramatically
better with fixed-rate, large-capacity deals and affordable Wi-Fi,"
says Hall.
"Fixed-rate or large-megabyte-capacity deals have removed a lot
of the fears about access costs."
International data roaming tariffs remain high and are unpopular
with consumers and small-business users, but in large vertical
deployments most users are "in country" most of the time, and are
unlikely to run up large roaming bills.
One of the ways to overcome this is data compression, as used on
the Blackberry. This means even executives who travel frequently
should not run up enormous bills.
Web access - whether it is used to view the corporate portal or
to download music - is more of an issue. There, IT directors will
need to rely on account monitoring and end-user education to
control costs and prevent abuse.
Mobile security:
the balancing act >>
Get on the right mobile OS track >>
Research in Motion: Blackberry
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Microsoft Windows
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