What Part of Your Application Do You Mobilize?

Today I had an interesting discussion with one of our favorite software partners. They are in the process of mobilizing about a dozen different software modules in their asset management software application. The question we were debating was - how much of their enterprise database application do they replicate on their handheld computer? This is an important question for them and impacts the amount of money and time the projects will take. Here are a few of the issues we pondered:

  1. How does your mobile workforce capture data today? Do they use paper forms and a clipboard?
  2. Where is the primary ROI (return on investment) coming from? Is it eliminating data entry at the office? Is it extending business processes to the mobile workforce? Is it getting complete and valid data from the field? Is it the ability to query enterprise information from the field? Is it visibility to real-time data (inventory, shipping, project status, etc.)?
  3. Do you need your entire enterprise database application in the hands of your mobile workforce, or only a subset?
  4. Do you require a full laptop or Tablet PC, or can you accomplish your goals with handheld PDAs?

The answers to these questions helped us understand what to mobilize first. Handheld PDAs do not yet have the same level of data storage and memory that are available on enterprise database servers. Therefore, you need to determine what subset of data and software functionality you need on the handheld PDA to get your desired ROI.

If the primary reason for mobilizing your "service orders" is to eliminate the need to re-type all of the information once you return to the office, then electronic forms with database synchronization is enough. If you want your mobile PDA application to be pre-populated with data from your enterprise database, then this is another level of sophistication. If you want your PDA application to take advantage of handheld computer components like GPS, digital cameras, Bar code scanners, GPRS data cards, etc., then you can add this layer. If you want lots of validations and business logic on the handheld this is another consideration.

The bottom-line, find your primary source of ROI, and start there with version 1 of your mobile application. You can then prove to yourself the value of mobilizing your business processes and then confidently build from there.

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