Enterprises no longer need to be convinced of the benefits that mobile applications offer. Field sales and service professionals in many organizations can now respond more quickly to customer needs, update inventory and process orders in real-time, and have all the information they need to close a sale or complete a repair in the palm of their hand. The productivity gains, equipment savings and ROI provided by mobile applications are well documented.

The debate has moved on from “do we need a mobile application” to “how can we deploy and manage it.” Enterprises need to identify the requirements of their business, the preferences of end users and IT staff, and select a device/software/network combination that best meets their needs.

The importance of user buy-in

With the advent of the BlackBerry, executives soon realized the freedom, flexibility and efficiency gained through mobile access to email also applied to enterprise software. But as IT managers examine the mobility needs, user preferences, and budget requirements of different business units across the enterprise, they soon realize that there is no “one size fits all” solution.

Field service workers are usually the “test case” for mobility in an enterprise. Their work involves spending most of their time on-site with current and prospective customers, and they need to have access to information, making them a natural fit for a mobile solution. Because of this, field service workers are often saddled with attempts to “shrink down” enterprise applications onto mobile devices without making any changes to their interface or functionality. The result is often failed or less than stellar deployments due to lackluster user adoption.

For this reason, many enterprises that have successfully implemented a mobile solution consulted with field staff on the best device for their needs and the best interface to aid them in their collection of updates and daily reporting of services delivered or sales made. By determining end-user preferences and requirements prior to a large-scale rollout, enterprises can then deploy a standardized mobile solution with a much higher probability of success. The bottom line is choosing the right mobility solution from the start will lead to fewer headaches when deciding on devices and networks and when managing the evolution of the system over time.

Support for multiple devices

It is also important to retain flexibility by choosing a solution that can support future migration to new devices. The device market is changing so fast that any decision made at the time of deployment could be almost obsolete within six months with newer devices coming onto the market offering immediate and significant incremental business value and/or cost reduction opportunities. And besides technology advancements, companies may be forced to switch devices due to other business factors. The recent litigation between NTP/Visto and RIM provides a clear example, as executives were forced to consider life without a BlackBerry. With some employees becoming more dependent on their mobile device than their desktop PC, the enterprise mobility strategy must include the flexibility to minimize disruption if the company needs to switch devices to accommodate mergers or acquisitions, change of operator, customer demands or new technologies.

Gartner predicts that the overall TCO for mobile solutions will rise by 30 percent for most enterprises. Gartner attributes this cost to "the increased support costs for a more-disparate set of mobile data users, lack of management of recurring monthly charges for mobile data services and the need to support point solutions across multiple types of wireless data offerings.” Selecting a mobile solution that supports most popular devices will reduce costs, while also reducing the time to roll out mobile applications to a new set of devices. Enterprises should consider the cost savings and simplicity of deploying a single application that supports multiple devices, versus deploying multiple applications that each support a single device.

Searching for a global solution

When rolling out mobile applications to thousands of users across multiple territories it is vital to consider choosing software that supports the majority of devices without needing any modification. Whether staff choose to work on PDAs, Pocket PCs, BlackBerries, notebooks or laptops, or even a touch-tone phone using IVR, they should still receive the same updates from the back-end applications running over any SMS, GSM, GPRS, 1x RTT, 2 way paging or Mobitex. Global enterprises should deploy a software solution that accommodates multiple language support and both wireless device and network variances without any costly re-engineering of the application.

Larger field sales and service organizations pose particular problems because they frequently involve the management of data delivery across multiple territories, over numerous networks. For example a field engineer in a remote location may need to run the same field service application interchangeably on either his BlackBerry or his laptop depending on the service task he is undertaking. He may prefer to use his laptop for diagnostics in an area with poor wireless coverage. However at the next job he may prefer to use his BlackBerry. Or a field service organization may have some engineers based in the UK using Vodafone as their primary network, while their US counterparts use Cingular/AT&T. Global enterprises should select mobile software that supports different devices and networks worldwide without requiring extensive modifications for each region, device or carrier.

Benefits of a hosted application

As previously mentioned, simplification is a great way to reduce TCO. One significant way to simplify application delivery is to use a hosted ‘on-demand’ model, enabling employees to access mobile applications on whatever device they happen to be working on at that time. Analysts at Unstrung advise that "if the use of BlackBerries, Treos, or other mobile messaging devices extends beyond a few top executives, it's time to consider outsourcing the management thereof." Benefits of a hosted mobility model include centralized device management, different user privileges for different groups, and even 24 x 7 monitoring of multiple networks around the world, to guarantee message delivery (depending on the service provider).

The software-as-a-service-model grew by 60 percent in 2005 according to industry analyst firm AMR. The next logical step is to extend hosted software to the field sales and service staff that have most contact with customers. This means providing access to customer data held within enterprise CRM and ERP systems such as Siebel, NetSuite, and SAP via mobile devices, so they have the most current information at their fingertips while they are on-site with customers.

Conclusion

This article has discussed a number of different strategies for successfully selecting and deploying an enterprise mobility solution. The three parts of a mobile solution – the application, the device and the network – all need to work together in concert for the solution to be effective. By selecting the right application using the criteria mentioned in this article, enterprises can ensure that their mobile strategy meets the usability needs of end users; delivers the responsiveness and efficiency customers demand; and can meet the needs of a global business by providing real-time information access on any device and any network, worldwide.

Peter Semmelhack is CTO of Antenna Software.