Maryland Mobile Technology Seminar

On November 1st I will be speaking at the Maryland Mobile Technology seminar in Baltimore. This will be the third event in this series and we meet a lot of new people with very unique and interesting mobile project needs.

This week I spoke at the Utah Mobile Technology conference and it was great fun. These are educational events where generally 6 mobile industry veterans share knowledge and experiences in how to architect, design, develop and implement mobile software and hardware solutions.

Let me know if you would be interested in having one of these seminars in your region.

MobileDataforce's European Partner Summit

On October 17th I will be speaking at our European Partner Summit in The Netherlands. MobileDataforce has a number of very interesting new mobile software solution updates and new developments that we will be discussing with our European partners. We will also be discussing mobility trends, mobile solutions and how to provide our customers with the best possible services and support.

GPS, GIS and Handheld PDA Software Solutions

GPS is everywhere! More and more often customers are asking that their mobile handheld computer solutions included integrated GPS. Work orders, vehicle tracking, asset tracking, and route delivery projects now often require it. Recently on my trip to Australia, a company asked that their sales force automation project include GPS data capture. They want to make sure their sales staff are visiting their customers as reported.

Many companies want the added documentation that capturing a time/date stamp with a GPS coordinate gives them. They apply this to any work done at that location.

On engineering and construction projects - it is often requested that geological tests' (water, soil, compaction, etc) locations be captured with a GPS coordinate, to make re-testing easier.

On vehicle tracking projects - our customers often want to know the exact location of their vehicle (company asset) at any time. Why? So they can re-route the delivery truck when needed, optimize the route, or predict delivery times for customers. Sometimes, 2 delivery trucks need to meet up and exchange cargo. If the central database at the company office can see the location of all of their vehicles in real time, it makes it easier to have trucks meet up at convenient locations.

Using a RAD tool like MobileDataforce's PointSync, it is easy to capture a GPS location within any mobile application.

Rugged Handheld Computers

On almost a daily basis my sales team gets asked what handheld computers does MobileDataforce support. This is a fairly easy question to answer because PointSync supports all Win CE, Windows, Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows for Tablet PCs operating systems and the devices that use them. Using PointSync - you can build once and support all of these different operating systems.

Once you have configured your mobile application using a RAD tool like PointSync, you will then configure the application's screen size and GUI to match the screen space of the handheld, laptop or Tablet PC that you need.

This is a powerful feature. Many times supervisors may have laptops, but the work crew in the field may have a ruggedized handheld. Both need access to the same enterprise data, but on different size screens.

We often deliver solutions using the following handheld devices, although we are not limited to them:

Psion Teklogix
Symbol Technologies
Intermec Technologies
TDS Recons
Trimble

Utah Mobile Technology Conference

Tomorrow we are conducting an educational event in Salt Lake City for government agencies and local companies that are interested in mobile technology. This is our second event and these are usually very well attended and a lot of fun.

Sessions include:

• Panel discussions on subjects related to mobile projects, mobile technology and mobile strategies will be covered in detail.
• Latest advances in ruggedized computers
• Latest advances in PDA phones
• Latest advances in mobile enterprise software solutions
• Latest government mobility projects and technologies.

Reviewing the list of registered attendees I note IT folks from city, county and state agencies. I see a few from local facilities management companies, labs, transportation agencies, department of environment and many others. This will be a lot of fun.

If any of you would like an educational event on mobile technology in your neighborhood please let me know.

Handheld PDA Applications & Business Processes

Replacing paper forms and paper-based business processes is a big part of the work we do here at MobileDataforce. However, people don't always realize that moving from paper to mobile applications can provide a whole lot more than simply an electronic version of a paper form.

Business processes and workflow can be designed into your mobile application to provide the following benefits:

1. If/then statements assigned to data fields - if the answer is YES then the application jumps to page 7, if NO the application jumps to page 2. An example - if your roof is made of tile, then jump to page 5 and answer questions concerning tile roofs.
2. If greater than statement - example, if the answer is greater than 5 (b>5) the application can jump to a different page and ask a different set of questions. This is often used in handheld computer based inspections and quality assurance applications. For example, the condition of the building's paint is rated from 1-10, 1 being bad, 10 being good. If the answer is 2 - then this represents a bad condition that can be configured to initiate or jump to a work order and scheduling page.
3. User Login - if you login as a supervisor - you get visibility into pages that the work crew does not see.

These are just 3 of the hundreds of different combinations and ways you can build business processes and workflow into a mobile form or application. For more information and sample code please read Dave Wasden's blog article on this subject. Additional benefits - new hired staff will learn faster and be more efficient because the application is directing them through the proper steps to complete an application accurately. Automating business processes allow you to scale your work and ensure business processes are followed.

ROI for Enterprise Mobile Solutions

It has been quite some time since I wrote about the subject of mobility project ROIs (return on investment). I last addressed this issue in a January article so let me provide an update on it.

Mobility ROIs often come from the following:

1. Reduce time required to re-type data from a paper form to a computer application
2. Reduce driving/delivery time to turn in paper forms to the office
3. Reduce fuel expenses from driving to the office to deliver paper forms
4. Reduce typing errors when re-keying data
5. Reduce shipping expenses if you are posting documents to the office
6. Reduce time on phones trying to understand the author's handwriting on paper forms
7. Reduce delays caused from waiting for paper forms to be submitted and re-typed
8. Reduce time wasted on incomplete paper forms (missing information)
9. Reduce time wasted on phone calls dispatching new work/service orders
10. Reduce field training time - mobile software can instruct the user on correct methods
11. Reduce time wasted on correcting wrong or invalid data (wrong customer numbers, etc)
12. Reduce fuel expenses from inefficient service order routing and dispatching
13. Reduce time invested in invoice disputes - show time/date stamp & GPS location of work
14. Reduce staff workload and staff expense - re-typing and communicating with field
15. Speed up customer invoicing, and collect cash faster
16. Save data directly to a central database (that is backed-up) for safe keeping
17. Save data directly to a central database for immediate visibility by management
18. Route optimization saves fuel, improves productivity and saves time.
19. Take before and after digital photos of work to prove time, location and work
20. Improve customer service with faster more efficient work dispatch
21. Improve customer service by checking inventory levels remotely
22. Improve customer service by checking shipping status remotely
23. Improve dispatch and productivity with real time work order status updates

As this list identifies - there are a great many reasons to mobilize. In summary, improved efficiencies, improved customer service, improved productivity, improved cash flow, reduced errors and expenses. This equates to better business.

MobileDataforce Delivers Mobile Solutions to Large Enterprises

MobileDataforce is doing very well. We are succeeding at winning large mobility projects around the world including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, UK, The Netherlands, Canada and in the USA. Why are large companies trusting MobileDataforce (a relatively small company) to deliver these mission critical applications?

MobileDataforce - with 6 years of experience delivering mobile solutions, is one of the most experienced veterans of this industry. We have some of the smartest and most experienced mobile software developers and project managers in the world, and we have invested over 24 man-years of development into our PointSync solution. Our strategy from day 1 has been to create RADs-ME applications (rapid application development solutions for mobile environments) that would help IT departments, Systems Integrators, and my own services teams deliver powerful mobile solutions quickly and affordably. We want our customers to be receiving their ROIs in as short an amount of time as possible. This required us to develop applications and frameworks (that we call PointSync) that allow the user to develop a wide variety of different mobile applications for a wide variety of industries quickly and effectively.

MobileDataforce also partners with the best. We have more experience than any other company at developing and delivering RADs-ME applications, but not in developing mobile relational databases. In order to have the fastest, and most powerful mobile databases in the world embedded within PointSync - we have partnered with Sybase/iAnywhere to deliver them as part of the PointSync solution.

Sybase/iAnywhere has a $2 Billion market cap, and has been building enterprise database solutions since 1984. They have thousands of employees, offices around the world, and over 10 million licenses of their mobile database called Ultralite distributed around the world. Sybase is the world's leader in mobile databases and synchronization technologies. We partnered with Sybase in order to offer our clients the fastest mobile application development environment, with the most powerful and proven mobile relational database technologies. The combination of MobileDataforce's and Sybase's mobile technologies provides our customers with the most experienced, secure, scalable and proven solutions in the industry.

PointSync enables our customers to quickly create powerful mobile database applications, using the best technologies from the best software companies in the industry. Here are a few of our large enterprise customers:

National Park Service
Department of Environmental Quality
Department of Agriculture
Department of Fish and Game
Micro Beef
Exxon
Cartegraph
Unilever
Fulton Hogan
US Air Force
Alabama Power
Idaho Transportation Department
Rail Crew Express
New York Power Authority
Gillette
Washington Group International

P.S. we also have a large number of small customers that have 5-25 mobile users as well. We keep our software prices low enough that even small companies can earn a good ROI in a few months.

Mobilizing Business Processes for Handheld Computers

I often get asked if we have experience delivering mobile solutions for a specific industry and a specific company's unique business process. For example - ACME Air Conditioning Ltd wants to know if we can deliver an ACME mobile work order solution. This is a fair question, since everyone wants to work with a company that has experience, however it is also important to understand what is unique about your business process and what is not. I will explain in a moment.

Let's first discuss a few definitions:

• Mobilizing - replacing paper forms with mobile applications on a mobile handheld computer, or taking an existing software application that runs only on desktop or laptop computers and configuring it to operate on a mobile handheld device such as a Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC, or a Win CE device.
• Business Process - It is the steps or tasks that are involved in doing a business function.

Now let's review a work order business process. This business process is used by many different industries including:

• Sign Installers
• Government Agencies
• HVAC
• Building maintenance
• Elevator Maintenance
• Manufacturing operation
• etc.

A work order often has the same common components across many industries:

• Identify the service technician's name/ID
• Time/Date
• Customer
• Warranty information, equipment description
• Work/job location
• Service assignment/task
• Description of work completed
• Parts used
• Status of work
• Technician closes work/service order or selects a follow-up task
• Total charges
• Technician and/or customer signs the work order

A work order looks quite similar all over the world no matter what the company, industry or geographical location. So developing and customizing a mobile work order for a company is relatively simple.

Now let's consider the data synchronization process. The movement of data between a handheld computer and an enterprise database is also quite similar across most business processes.

Handheld computer application==>synchronization server==>enterprise database

Then back enterprise database==>synchronization server==>handheld computer application.

The path the data follows is nearly the same no matter the business process. So our synchronization technology can easily support ACME Air Conditioning Ltd's requirements with little or no customization.

The mobile application is where one needs to create customized configurations and features. However these features in some form or another are used by nearly all mobile applications. I covered this in another blog article. Features include the user interfaces, business logic, validations, support for special handheld device features (barcode, RFID, GPS, etc), mobile printing and customized logos/branding. This is all done using a RADs-ME application (such as MobileDataforce's PointSync Developer). PointSync Developer enables the user to configure these features and functions with point and click selections. Every organization, every solution, and every geographical region of the world requires these same features. So none of these application requirements are unique to a business process or industry - every mobile application requires them.

So the important question is not if we have experience working with ACME Air Condition work orders, but rather do we have experience developing work order business processes in general, and can our software application provide all the functionality, flexibility, security, and synchronization technologies required to quickly configure your mobile application at a cost effective price.

To summarize -

1. Business processes (such as work orders) often are very similar across many different industries around the world. Therefore experience developing a work order business process - prepares you for supporting many different work order formats in many different industries.
2. The flow of data (synchronization) between a handheld computer and the enterprise database is also quite similar around the world, and across industries.
3. The features and functionality required in most mobile applications are also very similar across industries, business processes and geographies.
4. The most important questions a company needs to ask are - Does a particular mobile software solution provide the flexibility and functionality required, at a cost effective price, and does the vendor have experience mobilizing your specific business process?

Asset Management, PDA Handhelds & Village Governments

We sent Eric Freed, one of our senior PSO team members, out to West Dundee, IL to implement a mobile asset management solution for the village of West Dundee. It turns out that one of the village officials is also a member of the local fire department. When Eric needed a place to stay overnight, they volunteered an empty room in the brand new fire station.

Eric insisted that the alarm going off three times during the night was not too bad, but there were no mints on his pillow and the beds were not turned down. He also recommends wearing pants when sliding down the fire pole.

The solution that we implemented involved using Trimble ruggedized handheld computers, MobileDataforce's PointSync, and Cartegraph's asset management software called SignView.

Mobile Handheld Applications & Marketing in Canada

Marketing is an interesting phenomenon. Why do some geographical areas suddenly generate a lot of sales opportunities, when prior months they were silent? Ontario, Canada is suddenly on fire. We are receiving all kinds of phone calls and emails from companies in Ontario this month interested in MobileDataforce's mobile solutions. I shrug my shoulders and am thankful.

Perhaps with the hint of autumn in the air, companies are back to thinking about how to improve their remote business processes. As field services teams complete their seasonal work and return to the office with suggestions for improving their field data collection processes, IT teams call MobileDataforce asking for recommendations.

If a PDA phone can be used to keep remote and mobile workers updated, why can't those same devices communicate with their enterprise databases? THEY CAN! Perhaps thoughts like this motivate Canadians to call in September!

Coming Back for More - Mobile Applications

In the world of software and services, the best compliment a customer can give is to come back for more. In the last month, these existing customers, have requested additional products and services from MobileDataforce:

• Pepsi MidAmerica
• Unilever
• St. Gobain
• Cartegraph
• Idaho Department of Agriculture
• City of Los Angeles
• Teph Seal
• Micro Beef

There were many more, but these are fresh on my mind. I want to thank all of our customers for your continuing confidence and business!

Electrical Utilities & Handheld PDAs - New Zealand

This morning I was reviewing the sales inquiries that we have received from both Australia and New Zealand recently, and noticed a company that provides contract services to the electrical utilities industry. MobileDataforce has a great deal of experience in this area as detailed in the following articles: meter maintenance, underground cable laying, electrical pole inspections and mobile electrical utility inspections.

Our PointSync software application enables IT departments and IT consultants to rapidly develop and customize inspection applications for utilities and their contractors in an affordable manner.

RAD Tools for Mobile Application Development in Australia

RADs-ME - rapid application development for mobile environments. That is the definition of MobileDataforce's PointSync software. MobileDataforce has just set up an Australian based support, development and sales center in our North Sydney office.

We have been supporting our ANZ customers from Europe and North America for the past few years, but we recognized that that was less than ideal. Now our support and services teams are available for onsite visits, trainings and support throughout ANZ.

PointSync enables our customers to build their own mobile applications without programming or coding, or have their favorite IT consultant develop it. They can configure their applications, the user interface, business logic and the integration with back office databases from within PointSync. This flexibility and ease of use has made PointSync popular around the world.

PointSync allows companies to rapidly develop and deploy customized/bespoke mobile applications specific to their unique business processes at an affordable price.

Our MobileDataforce Australia team is now available to help you understand how to mobilize your unique business processes. Please feel free to contact us to explore your mobility needs!

Australian Sales

Mobile Application Development Training - Sydney

The tall basketball player from Boise, also known as MobileDataforce's VP of Product Management, Dave Wasden is going to be conducting training classes on mobile application development and enterprise mobility deployments in Sydney in September.

Please let Andy Noble know if you would like to participate. His contact information can be found here under contact information for ANZ.

The classes will be focused on how to use MobileDataforce's PointSync Suite, to quickly and cost effectively develop and deploy a wide variety of different mobile applications.

Road Building, Asset Management, PDA Handhelds & Rented Street Signs

Ever since John Roudebush has joined our team and our board of directors, I pay attention to street signs. I snapped this photo on my recent trip to Melbourne, Australia. I was there helping set up our new sales and support center. Why do I pay attention to street signs you may ask...let me explain.

John spent his entire career in the highway services/roadway building business. He joined our board because he absolutely believes that companies with mobile workforces need mobile handheld solutions to run remote projects efficiently. John explains how his work crews required project data on the job site - data that was only available on paper back at the office. In addition, operations managers in the office, were always seeking data from remote project sites. How much work got done today...are we on schedule....when do we need more materials delivered... In his career this was always done by inefficient paper forms that were often delayed for days and weeks.

Here is an situation he sited - construction companies often rent safety and street signs for use on road building/maintenance projects. These are mobile assets that are often lost and misplaced. The company renting these signs need barcoded or RFID enabled tags on these signs so accurate inventory and accounting of the location of these assets can be known and managed.

Yet another story - he remembers a sign companies never returning for signs and how eventually the grass and weeds simply grew over these assets as they decayed.

Additional examples - road building companies often make a significant amount of their profit by meeting or exceeding quality standards, and by meeting project deadlines. This requires real time data from the project being sent to the project managers and business managers to ensure the right management and resources are being dedicated to the project to hit these numbers. If there is a problem, and it is found early, it can be quickly corrected so as to minimize impact on the quality and schedules. If the data is delayed, trapped on a paper form on a truck's seat, and nobody has visibility to it, then the damage can be great.

Fire Control Panels, M2M, Mobile Solutions & Australia

Flying home last week from Sydney, Australia I had about 18 hours to kill. My seat mate for this trip owns a company in Portugal that develops, sells and distributes fire control panels. The kind of control panel that detects fire in a specific room, automatically shuts fire doors, stops elevators, takes over control of the ventilation system (denies air to the rooms with fire, ventilates the hallways to allow visibility to those escaping the fire), turns on the sprinklers and alerts the fire department. These systems are complex and must be tested regularly.

The problem - it takes a long time to go up the elevator to the 14th floor, down the hall, unlock suite 1467, enter fire zone 82 and test the fire detector, then return to the control panel in the basement to see if it worked, reset the fire panel and then return to the 14th floor to test the next fire zone.

My seat mate was asking if handheld computers with GPRS/GSM (PDA phones) might be the answer. They not only need to record all the test results (which is currently done on paper), but they would like to be able to review the results of the test and reset the fire panel without leaving their inspection location. Hummmm....It is easy to use PointSync to create all the inspection applications on the handheld and to integrate this data with a backoffice database system using GPRS, but how would we control and reset the fire panel?

Machine-to-Machine (m2m) SMS messages are often used to control other devices. Our software partners Sybase/iAnywhere have designed a way to send a message to a hibernating PDA phone, wake it up and have it synchronize with the enterprise database. So the technology to control another piece of machinery certainly exists.

The fire panel would need a radio device that could receive SMS messages that are programmed to command it to perform various functions and then acknowledge the results to the sender. This is very doable. I hope we can get this project, it would challenge my engineers and stimulate their creativity.

Australian Hospital Systems and Asset Management

Another meeting our MobileDataforce Australia sales team had last week was with a large private hospital system in Melbourne. They have the need to manage their hospital assets using mobile handheld computers that are barcode enabled. By assets, I mean hospital equipment of all kinds. They need to know what medical equipment is in inventory, the location and condition of this equipment.

Today the process of asset management is done using paper forms that are later entered into an asset management database. This is far too inefficient for the hospital and they are seeking a way to make this process streamlined and faster.

MobileDataforce Australia will recommend using PointSync to quickly develop a mobile client that will integrate with their existing asset management application.

Melbourne Building Safety Inspections Using Handheld Computers

In Melbourne, Australia last week our MobileDataforce Australia team met with a company that does building inspections for commercial properties. They inspect buildings to ensure they are compliant with fire and safety regulations. Today, this data is recorded on reams of paper forms which is not only inefficient in the field, but requires all kinds of work back at the office to re-enter into a computer system. It is not just the process of collecting data, but the effort to research past noncompliance issues that take up a lot time.

That is the problem - the solution is to use MobileDataforce's PointSync to create a customized mobile application that enables all relevant data to be collected directly to a handheld computer that can synchronize automatically with your backoffice database. This eliminates hours of time each day. In addition, the handheld computer application can validate the data, remind the user what the appropriate answers are, ensure all data gets filled out and guides the user through the various inspection processes.

Sales Force Automation in Australia & MobileDataforce

While I was in Australia last week, my MobileDataforce Australia sales team and I met with one of our Melbourne based customer called St. Gobain. St. Gobain is a large multi-national company headquartered out of France, and with an office in Australia. Their IT staff is using PointSync to develop a bespoke/custom sales force automation application to help track daily customer and prospect visits and to document their calls and sales opportunity notes. St. Gobain supplies their customers with a large variety of chemicals and resins.

Sales force automation is a common and popular mobilization process here at MobileDataforce. We are engaged in at least 3 of these now. Some are being developed by internal IT staff, others are being done by MobileDataforce on behalf of our customers.

New Zealand Cattle Management & Handheld Computers

In Sydney, Australia last week, Andy Noble (MobileDataforce Australia's MD) and I met with Vani Saradhi from Psion Teklogix. Vani has been working on a large cattle management project in New Zealand that involves using over 1,000 Workabout Pro handheld computers.

It was an interesting discussion since we are also working on cattle management applications here in the USA. I wrote about our cattle management activities in an earlier article. We also met with a large multi-national holding company in Australia that owns large cattle feedlots. We are discussing our experiences with them as well.

As you can see in the picture to the right, much to my delight, there are Starbuck's Coffee shops in Sydney as well.

Warehouse Management and Inventory Application on Handheld Computers

We delivered a mobile warehouse and inventory application for use on Intermec handheld computers this week to Pepsi MidAmerica. It was developed using MobileDataforce's PointSync Suite. It was designed for use on handheld computers using barcode scanning technologies. Pallets of Pepsi products are brought to the warehouse, unloaded, scanned into the warehouse management system, stocked and redistributed to local retail stores.

This is the second application we have delivered to Pepsi MidAmerica in the past few months. PointSync can be used to develop a wide variety of mobile applications - warehouse management, sales force automation, field force automation, inspections, asset management, vehicle tracking applications and much more.

Mobile Quality Assurance in Australia's Alligator Country

We sent our Melbourne based sales engineer Pratheep, into the tropics of northern Australia this week. He flew 5 hours north of Sydney into alligator country to help CSR implement a mobile handheld quality assurance application using MobileDataforce's software for their sugar processing plants. After a successful implementation, I understand he made it back mostly intact.

MobileDataforce's Australian Expansion

I spent the last 10 days in Australia working with Andy Noble to open up our MobileDataforce Australia office in Sydney. Please note the good looking MobileDataforce shirt. We conducted a total of 12 sales presentations during that time. Australia is an amazing place, and I am excited at the opportunity to invest in the development of this market and to provide our customers with local sales, support and training.

David Wasden, our VP of Product Management, is heading down under in a few weeks to conduct PointSync training classes for a number of our partners and customers to help them learn how to use PointSync to develop a wide variety of mobile applications for their clients.

Department of Environmental Quality & Handheld Solutions

MobileDataforce is working with the Department of Environmental Quality for the state of Idaho. They are developing their first application to inspect fuel tanks. They are using PointSync to develop these applications internally. We love this! We are primarily a software company that supports our IT customers and SI partners and we love seeing the applications that our customers develop on their own using PointSync.