Mobile Expert Interview Series: VWFS's Carl Redman

I was able to schedule and conduct an interview with Carl Redman, Head of IT Development and Business Analysis at Volkswagen Financial Serivces in the UK today.  He is a veteran mobility user with two enterprise mobility implementations under his belt, and that makes him an expert in my estimation.

His first enterprise mobility implementation was a joint project between his developers and a team from Research In Motion.  The mobile solution was the Mobile Stock Audit app and was used on BlackBerry devices.  The app was integrated with SAP on the backend. It enabled his team of auditors to check on the status of over 20,000 vehicles distributed at auto dealerships around the UK.  Auditing is very important, because it can help detect dealerships that may be experiencing financial troubles.

The Mobile Stock Audit app enabled auditors to have updated reports on their BlackBerrys and to closely monitor the workloads of their auditors.

This first bespoke (customized) mobility app took six months to develop with RIM.  The mobile solution worked fabulously, but it was expensive to develop, maintain and support.  If they continued to use this bespoke model, they would need to hire additional IT staff just to develop and support future mobility applications.  Redman realized that bespoke mobility applications were not the ideal scenario for his future mobility applications.