Beyond Mobile E-mail and Web Browsing

Wireless PDAs and smartphones are gaining acceptance beyond simple applications such as access to email and web browsing. They are being adopted as an extension of enterprise productivity tools.

What is driving this acceptance is the software now available. Let's take a quick look at the current key operating systems and application groups.

Mobile Operating Systems

The main mobile operating systems are:

1. Microsoft Windows Mobile
2. Research in Motion [RIM] - on Blackberry
3. Symbian - mainly used by Nokia

There are three broad types of mobile applications:

1. Mobile Office Applications  - email and personal information management
2. Packaged Solutions - such as Sales Force Automation [SFA] and Enterprise Field Service solutions. These gain remote access to enterprise applications.
3. Custom Applications - typically provided by systems integrators or developed in-house.
   

According to Yankee Group is forecasting significant growth in all three segments:

Application Group	2007 Users	2010 Projected
Mobile Office	6.3 million	21.2 million
Packaged	3 million	10 million
Customized	1.8 million	4.7 million

 

Mobile applications are fast becoming one of the highest corporate technology return on investment; the most profitable being Enterprise Field Service solutions.

The returns are largely valued based upon improvements in customer service and resulting higher retention rates; as well as the normal return on capital assets.

Enterprise Field Service - whether it be medical teams or fixing your photocopier - keeping fleet resources, travel time and field workers utilized to the best percentage of time is key to payback.

Sales Force Automation - generally only requires deployment of packaged applications gives sales people real time access to critical information about product availability, customer history as well as near or real time sales order entry. This capability is decreasing the time utilized in administration tasks and allows sales people to see more cusotmers in a single day.

 

Business Case For Mobile Applications

In spite of ROI data being inconclusive [few deployments track returns]; business cases for most SFA implementations show an increase sales between 8 percent and 10 percent, an increase that easily covers cost of implementation.

To date, most deployments have focused on increasing revenues and improving productivity. The next round is likely to see more applications and services focused on decreasing costs.

Compared to 2-3 years ago, business cases today are looking so much better due to the dramatic price decrease in mobile PDA's.

Wireless PDAs and smart phones needed for most of the above applications represent only 16 percent of the installed base of mobile handsets today.

NEXT: Mobile Operating Systems

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