From Infoweek.
--
January 15, 2001
Doing Business Without Wires: PDAs
No longer used just for scheduling, PDAs are tackling key
business apps
By Aisha M. Williams
esco Distribution Inc., a leading distributor of
electrical products, has a new IT tool--albeit a
very small one--in its fight against rivals such as Home
Depot Inc.: handheld computers.
The Pittsburgh company's customers are often in the
field when they want to order supplies. "When you're
out on a construction site, there's not a phone on every
corner," says Russ Lambert, Wesco's director of
E-commerce. So Wesco worked with Vignette Corp.
to develop and implement a wireless application that
lets customers order products from just about
anywhere via handheld devices. "The robust
application lets us provide our customers with
customized catalogs of our products at their fingertips,"
says John Gierl, Wesco's application and connectivity
manager. It also promises to ease some of the pressure on Wesco's busy call
center.
Personal digital assistants are no longer just nifty tools for scheduling and
contact management; the lightweight terminals are increasingly running
enterprise applications. In a recent InformationWeek Research survey of
300 IT executives, 56% say handheld devices are on their project lists this
year.
Vendors are focusing on applications that address specific business needs.
IBM, for example, is developing banking, shopping, transportation-tracking,
and distribution-tracking software designed for use with Palm Inc.'s operating
system, the Palm OS. As companies turn to industry-and task-specific
capabilities, the goal isn't merely to extend existing business processes, but to
create new and better ones, as well. "Vendors are trying to help companies
improve efficiencies," says Mark Allen Smith, an analyst at Full Circle
Strategies.
Oracle and SAP are among the developers that already offer wireless
versions of their software, and new applications keep coming. Lotus
Development Corp. this week will unveil the first elements of its Domino
Everyplace server line, which will make it possible for wireless phones and
PDAs to run Domino and Notes applications. Lotus' Access server will let
customers deliver services such as E-mail, calendaring, and corporate
directories to mobile devices, while its Enterprise server will let users design
specialized business applications for wireless delivery.
The platform of choice for many new applications is the Palm OS.
Palm-based devices typically hold 2 Mbytes to 8 Mbytes of RAM and are
compatible with Windows PCs and Macintosh machines. Unlike their
predecessors--simple, "dumb" scanners--some Palm OS-based devices
support two-way wireless communication with back-end systems.
Office Depot Inc. last week unveiled a Palm OS-based application aimed at
small-and home-office businesses. Customers can use the devices to scan
products they typically purchase from the office-supply store, creating
customized catalogs they can use to order more goods. From then on,
whenever users scan a product code, they'll see its order history. The goal,
says Mike Deitrich, Office Depot's VP of communications and technology
services, is to "help our customers save time, eliminate order errors, and
better manage their businesses."
The city of Richmond, British Columbia, is three months into a project that
involves the use of handhelds to monitor its water and sewage systems. For
the city of 180,000, which is on an island, it's a critical application. "We need
to know the status of these pumps at all times," says Edward Hung,
Richmond's manager of advanced research and technologies.
The Canadian city is using software from AvantGo Inc. and Information
Builders Inc. to monitor and analyze those field operations. "AvantGo allows
our managers and communications staff to push information out to the PDAs
so field operators can tell which checkpoints aren't working and what time
they went down," says Hung. Information Builders' Web Focus tools
summarize and integrate the data across the city's database systems. To get
such information in the past, says Hung, "People used to scour Excel sheets
for hours."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution expects to save around $300,000 on
delivery services and generate thousands of dollars in new business thanks to
several new Palm OS applications. This year, the newspaper plans to roll out
an application on Symbol Technologies Inc. handheld devices, which run the
Palm OS, to streamline the return of unsold papers at more than 15,000
locations in the Atlanta area. Each newspaper rack will have a bar code;
delivery personnel will be able to scan in the location and the number of
newspapers that weren't purchased at the site, and the information will be
entered into back-end systems. "We'll then be able to automatically calculate
our retailers' bill," says CIO Ed Baer. Drivers spend hours managing the
process by hand.
Newspaper-delivery personnel are already using another Palm OS app to
streamline the home-delivery process: Rather than relying on printed address
labels, drivers get up-to-date delivery information in sequential order
throughout their route via handhelds. And the company is using a third
application to give door-to-door salespeople accurate subscriber information;
sales have increased 30% since the program began last summer.
McKessonHBOC Inc., a major pharmaceuticals distributor, is using mobile
technology to improve its delivery process. Some 800 of the company's
2,800 truckers are using handheld devices from Symbol running Palm OS to
save the company--and its customers--time and money. Every McKesson
package is imprinted with a bar code that's scanned before and upon
delivery. "We get electronic proof of every delivery," says Tom Magill, VP of
logistics technology.
McKesson, which contracts with private companies for most of its truckers,
resells the hardware to the truckers, then charges them a monthly fee for the
software and maintenance. The company is also marketing the devices to
customers who use one-way scanners to place orders. Since the Symbol
devices permit two-way communication, customers can get instant
confirmation and details on the status of their orders.
The approach has benefited businesses with a high rate of theft. "Because the
products are scanned at our distribution centers and users scan the products
when they receive them, inventory data is available immediately," says Magill.
"They can find out right away when the products walk."
Despite the benefits, however, adoption has been slow: Only 200 of
McKesson's 25,000 customers use the Symbol devices, at least partly
because the one-way scanners are less expensive.
Analysts say companies such as McKesson face other challenges, as well.
"The first major hurdle companies implementing wireless technology will face
is making the data existing on the back end "skinny" enough to push to
handheld devices," says Robyn Bergeron, an analyst at Cahners In-Stat
Group. Several vendors, including Broadbeam Corp. and ZTango Inc., are
making applications that can strip away unnecessary information, such as
graphics, residing in back-end databases.
Constantly evolving wireless standards (see story) and the costs of integrating
and deploying the technology throughout a company can also be issues. And
security remains a question mark. "There isn't any security," says Ken
Delaney, VP of mobile computing for Gartner. Once a user connects a Palm
to a back-end system, he or she can typically access just about anything.
Nevertheless, a growing number of businesses have decided the benefits
outweigh the costs. "Companies have realized how important the Palm is to
core business processes," Aberdeen Group senior analyst Riddhi Patel says,
"and more applications are being developed because of that." |
