Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future: clickmobile

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Mobile Expert Interview Series: ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy, Part 1

ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy

I was able to catch up with ClickSoftware's VP of Product Strategy, Israel Beniaminy, today in unseasonably warm Petach Tikva, Israel this morning for an interview.

Note: Israel responded in writing to my questions and then we followed up with a phone interview.

Kevin: What are your current roles and responsibilities? How long have you been in these roles?
Israel: I am Senior VP of Product Strategy at ClickSoftware. Informally, I describe this role as managing the process in which innovation ideas are created, gathered, researched, refined, selected and converted into concrete business plans. I have served in this and prior roles bridging between business and technology at ClickSoftware for the past eight years. Before that I served in more technical roles, and under pressure I will admit to still being a technologist at heart.

Kevin: Where are you located? How long have you been in that area?
Israel: During most of my professional career I have been based in Israel, including my current location at ClickSoftware's Israeli office, in Petach Tikva (near Tel Aviv).

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Israel: This tends to change quite often. Current snapshot: Main workhorse is Lenovo X200 laptop – e-mail, research, development, writing, etc. Blackberry Bold for voice and short e-mails; iPod Touch for music and reading e-books (the small size still makes for surprisingly convenient reading, and you can't beat its size and weight for portability). iPad for Internet browsing, some more e-mail (is that a recurring theme?), reading e-books and some games.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Israel: As a voracious reader, I love the e-book readers, switching between Kindle App, Stanza and iBooks according to the e-book type and source. Apart from these, I have LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter apps on all my mobile devices. My favorite navigation app is Waze – it works well, has good traffic reports, and it is so impressive that they got all that via crowd sourcing. Games come and go – one game I liked recently is Tower Madness.

Kevin: Do you ever use your mobile device to buy things?
Israel: Yes. Mostly e-books and applications.

Kevin: How many computing devices do you have in your home?
Israel: Depends on how you count. My wife, son and daughter each have a desktop. We also have a netbook but have been using it less since a lot of the things it can do are better on an iPad or iPod, or on my son's Motorola Milestone (Android mobile device). We also have several iPod Touch devices, gaming machines – Wii, PSP, and soon to add a living-room media computer.

Kevin: How long have you been involved in enterprise mobility?
Israel: For at least a decade now.

Kevin: How did you get involved in enterprise mobility?
Israel: Working on field service solutions, it was very natural to think of how to communicate with the field service engineers. I remember one customer of ours, a service organization, whose service engineers worked out of remote locations and didn’t start each day at the office. I think it was around 1995, when mobile data was very expensive and not too reliable, so the solution they came up with was to send each technician a fax with the next day's scheduled tasks. The technicians would report the task execution by filling in paper forms and faxing them back to the main office. Combine this with the complete inability to know where your workers are during the day, and you must find yourself thinking: "there must be a better way!" So we started out by integrating our scheduling and routing solutions with mobile solutions developed by partners, even when only a minority of field workforces were mobilized. Later, we saw that connecting to the field service management and scheduling system was a prime driver for mobilizing, and that mobility had to be tightly interwoven into the service task life cycle, so we developed our own mobility solutions.

Read Part 2 of this interview.
Read Part 3 of this interview.
Read Part 4 of this interview.

Whitepapers of Note:

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Building Compliance Features into Your Enterprise Mobility Solution, Part 2

Monitoring activities

This is Part 2 in this series on building compliance features into enterprise mobility solutions. You can read Part 1 here. This article looks at ways to configure best practices and other compliance requirements into mobile applications.

Sales and Marketing

It has been demonstrated many times that the trusted service technician that is standing in a customer's kitchen is a far better sales person than an unknown telephone sales person calling at dinner time. So how can you build processes into mobile applications that help your field services engineers be as effective as possible selling products and services? Wouldn't it be nice if there was an automatic prompt that told the field services engineer what to discuss with each customer?

I have personally purchased extended maintenance warranties from my own HVAC service man several times over the past few years. They show me how I can save money and get better maintenance by being on the plan. I trust the experience of my service technician.

Mobile Enterprise Applications

When companies first begin considering an enterprise strategy for mobility, they often do not consider the role and value “compliance” layers can play. Even mobility vendors have not yet realized the true value. For the most part, enterprises are still thinking of mobile applications as a way to provide quick and mobile visibility to reports, notifications, approval processes, email messages and to replace paper forms. These are all good features, but there is much more that can be accomplished with mobile enterprise applications than has often been considered.

One of the many challenges that companies have is managing a mobile workforce that is often working on remote and distant jobsites. Many important parts of the business can be impacted by how the mobile workforce does their job while in these environments. This article will discuss how mobile enterprise applications, with integrated compliance monitoring and prompting, can help companies manage remote and mobile work forces.

Customer Service in Remote Locations

The experience the customer has with your company is directly determined by how they are treated by the company representative they meet. Often the onsite worker is the only face to face interaction the customer ever has with a person from your company. The way the customer is treated and the services that are preformed can make all the difference between a good and bad experience and referral business. How do you ensure that best practices are being followed in remote worksites?

Jobsite Safety

Jobsites can often be dangerous. There may be safety issues and safety regulations that must be followed. There are often specific processes that must be followed to reduce risks and to provide the safest working conditions possible for the workers and other people around the jobsite.

Legal Liabilities

There are many risks that must be considered. If a jobsite is not properly prepared for safety and an accident happens, the company responsible for the work may be liable. How do you ensure your workforce follows the appropriate processses, does mandated tasks and documents these steps to reduce risks? Can a mobile device be used?

Best Practices

It is often the case that companies train their employees to do what is considered best practices within their company and industry. These best practices can be at the core of a company’s competitive advantage. How does a manager ensure that best practices are being followed on remote jobsites where there is no onsite supervision? Best practices might be the difference between running an profitable operation and an unprofitable operation.

Read Part 2 of this article.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Skanska Optimizes Mobile Workforce Management

I read this week that Skanska, a

leading global construction company, is implementing optimized scheduling, location based services and mobility to run on the Apple iOS Platform. It seems that Skanska UK’s Utilities Operating Unit will run ClickSoftware’s Mobile Enterprise Application on Apple smartphones and tablets running iOS. Skanska provides telecommunications, gas, power and water companies with infrastructure and asset management services. Their goal is to drive efficiency, improve customer service, enhance workforce productivity and reduce the impact on the environment.

Of critical importance to Skanska’s clients and prospects is the ability to drive productivity without compromising customer service by quickly blending in ‘real time’ planned and reactive emergency work. To achieve this, Skanska is working to optimize the deployment and control of hundreds of engineers in the field.

Of particular importance to Skanska is the ability to operate on Apple iOS-based devices such as iPhone and iPad. ClickSoftware, an SAP partner, will provide the ClickMobile solution to steer field engineers through relevant information capture and service processes via their iPhone and iPad mobile devices. This will include site schematic diagrams, safety procedures, project plans and customer and asset historical information. It also provides a two-way conduit allowing engineers to record important service level information in the field on their Apple devices to be fed back to the enterprise, and where appropriate the end client.

The optimal scheduling of crews will enable Skanska to offer very competitive Service Level commitments to clients. They will now automatically consider engineers’ skills, location, inventory, capital equipment and current workload and then balance these factors to deploy Skanska’s engineering crews in the most efficient manner. It will also continuously re-optimize the schedule in real-time to manage the work that will be reactive – continuously reshuffling the planned work with flexible time windows.

ClickLocate will monitor the engineers’ GPS location, providing the dispatch team with clear, real-time visibility of field operations, and allowing real time optimization based on actual engineer location.

ClickAnalyze will continually receive operational field data and provide intelligence on SLA compliance, engineers’ performance and areas of skills shortage. This can then be used to proactively improve future services and operations.

ClickSoftware has many utility and telecom customers, in fact, utility customers account for 40 percent of revenue. Their customers include Thames Water and Scottish Water in the UK, and PG&E, Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy in the United States. Telecom customers, account for 35 percent of revenue and customers include Bell Canada, Deutsche Telekom and Telstra.

Mobility Vendor Strategies for Supporting SAP's Unwired Platform

SAP Unwired Platform

I read a whitepaper today, ClickSoftware's Mobility Suite and the Sybase Mobility Solutions that details how ClickSoftware intends to support SAP's mobility strategy and the reasons for doing so.

I get a lot of questions from systems integrators about how the various SAP mobility partners will be supporting SUP and SAP's mobility strategy, so this is a timely whitepaper from one vendor that does a good job of explaining their strategy.

Related links:

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

HTML5 and Workforce Management and Service Optimization Solutions

I have been following the developments around HTML5 with interest so was intrigued by the following announcement.

This week ClickSoftware announced the availability of ClickMobile Professional, a major release built with the cutting-edge abilities of HTML5.

The flexibility of HTML5 technology allows for a “hybrid” deployment of the application: as a web-based application, it requires no download or installation. In “no-connectivity” situations, technicians can still use the application offline and when connectivity is back, store and forward messages.

With ClickMobile Professional the entire service ecosystem – in the field, in dispatch and call center, in HR and in the warehouse – gains real-world, real-time visibility and flexibility for the unpredictable service world where surprises are the norm and real time updates are a must.

Prashant Chatterjee, John Appleby

This is the list of questions concerning SAP's mobile strategy that readers have submitted to me over the past three days. I am attending the SAP Influencer Summit this week and have shared these questions from the mobility teams at SAP/Sybase. I have some answers already and will write these up in a separate article later this week. If you would like to add a question to this list please email them to me and put SAP Influencer Summit Questions in the subject line.

Here is the latest compilation of questions submitted by readers of the blog http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/.

Report from Last Week's ClickConnect North America 2010 on Enterprise Mobility

I had the opportunity to attend ClickSoftware's user conference for a couple of days last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was at the Royal Palm, a beautiful resort located in an orange grove. I was able to meet with many large utility customers and large field services organizations and spend some quality time with Shawn McEwan from Sybase and interview many of the executives from ClickSoftware.

Sybase an SAP company, was attending in support of their recently announced partnership with ClickSoftware who is utilizing the Sybase Mobility Platform in their solutions. Terry Stepien, president, Sybase iAnywhere attended and spoke at the conference. Here are some of his comments on the partnership, “By implementing ClickSoftware’s mobile applications on components of the Sybase mobility platform, the service industry benefits from an integrated offering from two industry leaders; proven mobility infrastructure from Sybase and proven mobile applications from ClickSoftware. This partnership will transform ClickSoftware’s customers through highly productive enterprise mobility solutions. We look forward to growing this partnership into 2011 and beyond.”

Aware and Intelligent Mobile Applications

I am very interested in mobile enterprise applications becoming smarter and more aware. Mobile applications should begin to understand our needs and start doing more things for us automatically. Every new feature in a mobile application should NOT mean there are more steps for us to do.

Microsoft has just kicked off a $400 million market campaign for Windows Phone 7. I read this week that the theme of the marketing effort will be to emphasize that smartphones should be simpler. They should provide us easy access to the things we use the phone for the most. I agree. One of the examples I read about was having the digital camera function available via a button without requiring unlocking the phone, finding the camera application and launching it. Just let me take a quick picture.

Here are several ways mobile applications can become smarter. Make them:

Geospatially aware
Business aware
Environmentally aware
Contextually aware

Geospatially aware: If I am arriving at a customer's location, the smartphone should recognize my GPS location and automatically query my CRM and provide me with the latest information about my customers' orders, customer service issues, payment schedules, order deliveries, etc. Don't make me ask for all of this information individually. Just send it to me so I am prepared.

Business aware: The mobile application should know my role and responsibilities in the company. Based on my job function it should automatically provide me with relevant information that I need in order to do my job. It should check to see if there are any open customer service issues, when a customer meeting is on my calendar.

Environmentally aware: Here are some examples weather, health, family schedule, travel plans, sitting, standing, exercising, heart rate, sugar level, body temperature, time of day. For the most part, these are simply data points. This data can be used to suggest and recommend things.

Context aware: Is it the middle of a work day, or are you at your daughter's soccer game on the weekend, or traveling in Europe? Is it in the middle of the night? Are you in an important meeting with a customer, or celebrating an anniversary with a candlelight dinner. These all represent different contexts in which information may be desired or not. If it is about time for lunch, look for good lunch options within walking distance of your location. Search for lunch deals. Consider my preferences when searching. Mobile applications need to start recognizing the different contexts in our lives and make adjustments based upon these understandings.

All of this information, with an increasing number of sensors on or in your smartphone, person and environment, integrated with business analytic applications and improved calendars should be developed to help us. You don't want annoying routine business calls when you are asleep in the middle of the night on a European vacation. Your smartphone should understand the context and make adjustments by automatically sending calls to voice mail.

I noted the other day that ClickSoftware is integrating an increasing number of these "aware" features into the SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution for the service sector. For example, notifying customers that the service technician is arriving within a certain period of time based upon their GPS location and traffic conditions.

Come see me at TechEd Las Vegas and let's brainstorm!

Here is a video comment that I recorded last week and posted to the SAP Mentor channel on this subject.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Do SAP and Sybase Recognize What is Happening?

I know many people that work at Sybase in the mobility products area. They were overworked before the acquisition. Now they are overworked times 10. Why? SAP bought them and enterprise mobility is in big demand today. SAP customers have been waiting a long time for an SAP direction and roadmap around mobility and now that SAP has a strategy there is a huge backlog of interest. What does SAP do with this interest? They call the product folks at Sybase Unwired Platform and request their assistance.

I don't think the management folks at Sybase yet recognize what the SAP ecosystem is going to do to them. I work closely with the SAP enterprise mobility ecosystem. The majority of these companies are going to want to partner with Sybase so they can support SAP's roadmap and strategy. Read SAP's Mobility Partners After SAP’s Acquisition of Sybase, Part 1 for more information on this subject. These companies have their own customer bases and are actively recruiting more business. This is going to drive a significant amount of new business to Sybase. It is going to require growth at Sybase.

SAP's Mobility Partners After SAP’s Acquisition of Sybase, Part 1

Many companies have asked me recently how the SAP acquisition of Sybase will impact the SAP enterprise mobility ecosystem. It is a fair question that needs to be answered, as there is an increasing interest and demand from enterprises for mobile applications.

Companies want and need to formulate a mobility strategy now, but they don’t want their first steps to be misguided. As a result they are watching webinars, attending conferences, downloading whitepapers and reading blogs in an effort to find answers. For years SAP did not provide many mobility answers. They struggled to understand and define a workable mobility strategy and roadmap. As a result, SAP mobility partners were forced to find their own answers. Today, however, things have dramatically changed in the world of SAP enterprise mobility. With SAP’s acquisition of Sybase, and their Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP), there is now a good and reliable mobile application platform and NetWeaver integration strategy that can be understood and followed by both customers and SAP mobility partners.

If your SAP enterprise mobility strategy calls for supporting a wide variety of mobile applications for different business processes, departments, users and industries, then you need to work with a MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform). If you need to support both horizontal and vertical mobile applications that need to run in both connected and disconnected modes, then you need to work with a MEAP.

Today, there are several MEAP companies. However, the obvious choice for SAP customers is the SAP/Sybase Unwired Platform. Why? SAP just spent $5.8 billion to help you meet your mobility requirements. It is SAP’s mobility solution going forward, and their roadmap includes features and functionality that will make the mobile infrastructure and implementation projects easier and more standardized so customers can achieve a lower TCO (total cost of ownership).

ClickSoftware and Rugged Working Environments

It is easy to forget about the world beyond the pocket, but it remains out there. There is a large market for mobile devices that must survive the rigors of rain, sand, mud and daily impacts. In the field service automation space, these working environments are the norm. SAP mobility partner ClickSoftware focuses on this area of enterprise mobility, and this means they add features to their mobility suite that others don't.

I had the opportunity to interview Gil Bouhnick from ClickSoftware a few months ago, and he shared that one of their recent projects included building union regulations and rules into the mobile application. Before certain tasks could be requested or started the union rules were considered in the mobile application. How many iPhone and BlackBerry applications have these requirements?

Because ClickSoftware focuses on rugged environments where the field service technician, lineman, or inspector may be working in solitary and remote locations, features have been added to their solutions that would alert the office in case of an emergency. Again, not many BlackBerry or iPhone applications have that requirement.

I have worked on many mobile forms projects in my time, so I appreciate that ClickSoftware has the solution ClickMobile Forms Editor. Mobile forms may seem like a rather simple applications these days, but they can be of enormous value. Let me explain. Mobile forms applications can have branching workflows in them. If an inspection reveals a measurement is XYZ, then it automatically jumps to mobile form page 16 where additional questions are asked. If the measurement was ABC, then it automatically continues to form page 2. These types of automated mobile forms and their workflows can direct the mobile workforce to complete the field data collection task completely and accurately the first time. Enterprise asset management, field services and inspection services all require extensive field inspection work that can benefit from mobile forms that wireless synchronize with the office.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future