Mobile grows up

Matt Norce has watched mobile computing evolve.

Four years ago, Norce, network administrator at J.C. Ehrlich, a Reading, Pa., pest-control company with 42 offices in five states, began giving mobile workers PDAs from HP.

He used synchronization software from Extended Systems to load appointment information and driving directions on the devices. But the 120 exterminators in the pilot project quickly asked for more functionality. “People start out with basic [personal information managment] applications. Then they see the potential of the software and they want to do enterprise apps too,” Norce says.

As a result, the pest-control company has added CRM and e-mail to its mobile arsenal. Working with Weidenhammer Systems, a Reading development firm, J.C. Ehrlich’s team built a CRM application specifically for PDAs, avoiding many of the headaches that businesses face when they try to squeeze an enterprise application onto mobile devices.

The pilot program is being extended to all of J.C. Ehrlich’s exterminators. On the hardware side, the HPs were replaced a while back with NEC MobilePros, “which are still our No. 1 unit,” Norce says. And the company is rolling out newer NEC models that run Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system.

According to Gartner, 55% of large companies plan to move their pilot mobile applications into production this year. The primary reason is competitive pressure; with customers and trading partners growing more demanding about speed and quality of service, large businesses need to get useful data out to their mobile workers.

But only 25% of mobile application deployments will succeed this year, according to Gartner. The research firm says “social factors” – such as the introduction of wireless technology to workers who aren’t ready for it – and bad architectural choices will be the major problems.

The good news is that mobile applications have matured enough so that a body of best practices has taken hold. Tips from analysts and businesses can help you learn from other IT organizations’ pain.

Find third-party help

Pitney Bowes rethought its mobility program when the Stamford, Conn., mail and document-management giant undertook a sweeping reorganization. A division of the company had equipped its field service agents with handheld devices long ago. But “it was a proprietary system designed to look inward,” says Ralph Nichols, Pitney Bowes’ service program manager for document-messaging technologies.The system had other flaws too; it was a batch system relying on data that might be up to two weeks old, and most input and output was in code rather than text, “so until you intimately knew the codes, the information in the machine didn’t have a lot of value,” he adds.

The primary product sold and serviced by Nichols’ division is Console Inserter, which is used by corporations with high mailing volumes to insert documents such as credit-card statements and utility bills in envelopes. A console inserter is a complex machine with many mechanical, electronic and software components.

Two years ago, Pitney Bowes standardized on Siebel Systems as its CRM and field-service application provider. But Siebel lacked wireless capability. For that, Pitney Bowes turned to Antenna Software, which offers a product called Antenna A3 for Siebel Field Service.

Antenna calls its underlying system A3 Mobile Foundation. The XML-based system supports diverse networks and carriers (including Code Division Multiple Access, General Packet Radio Service and two-way paging) and optimizes data transport accordingly, the company says. When Pitney Bowes technicians are out of network reach, the system stores their data input, then forwards it when they regain network access.

Futureproof your investment

Vendors of enterprise software and handheld devices are trying to make it easier to mobilize industrial-strength applications. Some are using a partner strategy, such as Siebel’s with Antenna. But some analysts believe that in the next two years, most chores now handled by wireless application gateway companies will be folded into enterprise applications.

“Today, there are a lot of small vendors” in the gateway business, says Nick Jones, an analyst with Gartner. “Most will not survive in the long term. The functionality will get sucked into larger apps. Oracle, IBM’s WebSphere, SAP, Microsoft – they’ve all got some [wireless] functionality already, and that trend will continue, with wireless application gateways becoming part of the larger portal server software.”

Hardware vendors have gotten in on the act as well. In June, Research In Motion (RIM) updated the development environment for its popular BlackBerry devices, adding extensions making it easier to integrate CRM and other enterprise applications with BlackBerry’s existing functionality.

Dave Werezak, vice president of marketing at RIM, says that when customers seek to mobilize software, “We work with Siebel, or SAP, and so on, and depending on the nature of the app, help establish the connectivity on the server side.”

Pick the right app

Dennis Gaughan, an analyst at AMR Research, says corporate mobile deployments have tended to fizzle because they lack a persuasive business case. “This stuff is not for the faint of heart, so the application should offer significant return on investment,” he says. “The problem is, most companies pick e-mail as their first [mobile] app, and it’s hard to develop a business case for that. So people deploy wireless e-mail to a select group of executives – and that’s where it stays.”

According to an AMR report, “83% of companies report that their first mobile project – and often their last – is wireless e-mail access, which they choose . . . because it is an unambiguous application that is already widely adopted.”

Despite this allure, e-mail usually turns out to be useless as a test bed for other mobile applications, says Gaughan, who co-authored the report. The cost is high ($40 per month per user at some large businesses) and its benefits are almost impossible to quantify – not exactly a convincing formula for a pilot project.

You’re most likely to show positive results (and persuade senior management that mobility is a worthwhile investment) if you select applications that directly affect your ability to serve customers, AMR found. This is why salesforce automation and field service are both popular choices (see graphic, right).

In the first year, Pitney Bowes equipped its field service engineers with handhelds running a Siebel/Antenna application – inventory in the field dropped 15% and the number of expensive emergency orders to the company’s central distribution center dropped 90%, Pitney Bowes’ Nichols says.

And according to J.C. Ehrlich’s Norce, that company’s technicians have significantly increased their number of daily appointments. These are the kinds of returns that persuade business executives to keep investing in mobilization.

Be wary of wireless

Mobile applications that can be synched up with company servers a few times each day – perhaps even once a day – might work perfectly well (and are almost sure to cost significantly less). But companies tend to fall in love with the idea of real-time communication, and thus commit themselves to wireless without analyzing whether employees need the technology. This can lead to fiscal disaster.

According to Gaughan, one company interviewed by AMR had so much trouble implementing its wireless network that the cost of its mobile project eventually doubled initial forecasts. The problems revolved around ensuring network availability and security/authentication. Another company went through three different handheld devices, unable to find one that matched mobile workers’ needs.

True, real-time communication – that is, a wireless network with automatic background synchronization – is expensive and complex. While AMR says this solution might be needed for global logistics and transportation workers, it might be overkill for other employees. For example, delivery drivers whose routes vary little probably would need only a daily cradle-based synchronization.

Shell Pipeline, a subsidiary of Shell Oil Products, went through this decision-making process. Over the past three years, Shell Pipeline undertook an implementation of SAP’s ERP system. Initially, the SAP didn’t affect Shell Pipeline’s field technicians; they continued to mail paper forms to headquarters, where the data was keyed in. This process was inefficient, and the data was spotty and old by the time it made its way into the database.

For a time, Shell Pipeline asked the field technicians to become proficient SAP users; they printed out their work orders at the beginning of the week, and manually entered data into SAP at the end of the week. While this improved the quality of the data, it cut into the field technicians’ critical “wrench time.” It also created an unhappy workforce; technicians had to work through more than 20 SAP screens to complete each report, and according to a Shell spokesman, they made no secret of their unhappiness with the system.

Shell decided to outfit the techs with handhelds and create applications that would let them enter work-order, inspection and status updates while in the field, and transmit the data to the SAP system.

The company first looked at wireless products for real-time communication, but decided public networks wouldn’t support such an ambitious project, especially because the technicians are frequently in rural areas of California and Louisiana, where wireless simply won’t work.

Shell settled on offline application access and cradle synchronization instead, using Telispark’s mWorkManager and mInspect applications, as well as Symbol Technologies 8100 handheld devices – at the time, the only devices that were rugged enough for the company’s needs. Telispark enables two-way communication between field technicians and SAP.

When technicians cradle their Symbol 8100s and transmit back to headquarters, data first goes through the Telispark server, then into the SAP system, updating records as needed. Next, information downloads from SAP, through the Telispark server and out to the field. Shell says the company built special firewalls and devoted massive attention to security protocols at the Telispark-SAP connection point (see diagram).

J.C. Ehrlich is moving toward wireless, Norce says, but the company has become comfortable with using cradles. Technicians’ devices run software that generates a text file and multiple database files. Through either a cradle or a wireless connection, the techs send their day’s information to the company’s AS/400, which splits the data and routes it to the appropriate application or database.

During the business day, customer service reps set up technicians’ appointments for the next day. At night, that data is downloaded to handhelds.

Don’t overlook training

Training is a vital part of any mobile project because users often are reluctant to alter their work processes, and might resent the new technology. Shell Pipeline overcame this hurdle by selecting 40 volunteers (out of 300 technicians) to become “super users.” The volunteers were trained on the Symbol handheld and the Telispark applications, then they trained their peers. Shell Pipeline says this peer training led to rapid acceptance of the mobile devices, though there are still a few diehards who want to write on the back of an envelope.

The company estimates it’s cut down on field technicians’ paperwork by 80%; saved the workers up to three hours per week of paperwork prep time; and slashed six to eight hours of data-entry time per technician per week.

Once Pitney Bowes settled on Siebel and Antenna, the integration was “no different than anything else,” Nichols says. The non-technical facets of integration were more challenging, he adds. “We got the end-user community involved in explaining the world they live in. [IT] project team members went out to walk in users’ shoes for a day, and we had a lot of workshop sessions to talk about functionality.”

Gartner’s Jones says that steady technological improvements have pushed other challenges to the fore among companies considering mobile applications. For example, “Before mobility, [field service] engineers would come to a regional office in the morning to fill out forms, pick up new forms and chat around the coffee machine.” Equipping those engineers with wireless devices eliminates the need to visit that office daily, which would appear to be a good thing.

However, Jones says studies indicate that “the way field-service engineers learn to fix things is not to read manuals or bulletins – but to talk to each other at the coffee machine. Take that away and you’ve broken what sociologists call ‘the community of practice.'”

As mobile computing technology matures, you can expect these “soft” challenges to gain prominence. In a way, that’s good news – many of the technology challenges are now manageable, if you proceed cautiously.