Mobile Data Collection is a Different Breed of Mobile Application

There is a whole category of mobile applications that is easy to overlook.  It is the mobile data collection category.  Many of these solutions are project specific.  That means a large utility, contractor or government agency needs to collect data on mobile devices in the field for a project, but there is no existing databases to store this data and/or to create reports on it.

When I was the CEO of a mobile software company I was surprised by how much database work my team ended up doing.  We were a mobile applications company, but since there were no existing backend database applications to store the data, we ended up developing those as well.  Once the database was developed, our customers would often want browser access and reports.  Good development work, but it could quickly divert your focus away from mobility.

Different Mobile Application GUI Designs - Mobile Epiphany

I am beginning to see more and more mobile applications that use photos and maps as GUIs (graphical user interfaces).  In the world of mobile augmented reality, the photo can be the main menu of the mobile application.

The image on the right is from an application called TouchInspect by Mobile Epiphany.  The founder of Mobile Epiphany, Glenn Kletzky, has many years of in depth experience in the electronic games industry and takes a unique and graphically rich approach to many of the GUIs in his mobile data collection applications.

This is a very interesting approach to GUIs.  It is not just a text based menu system, but images that can quickly paint a thousand words.  Glenn describes his GUI design as a finger-touch-based interface that is trainable within an hour.

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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:

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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.

Network-Centric Warfare and Network-Centric Field Services

Last year I published an article on Ulitzer called Network-Centric Field Services. This article discussed the way the US military uses mobile data collection, satellites, drones, M2M and many other data collection tools and techniques to create an accurate and real-time picture of their work environment. This approach enables the users of this system to see where their assets are located, where they are needed and how best to manage them at all times.

I believe this approach has great value for field service operations and many other areas and is worth studying in detail. The ability for a company to know in real time where their fleet of vehicles is located, where their human resources is located, where their jobsites are located, the status of their jobs and where their equipment and mobile inventories are located is critical to effectively managing field services. Equipment and mobile inventories can be better shared across projects, and the right people can be used on the right projects at the right time.

In a plant maintenance environment, equipment can be constantly reporting its status and maintenance needs either in a connected or disconnected mode to a plant maintenance team. This data can alert when there is a problem, or automatically schedule itself for maintenance. This is especially useful when maintenance experts are responsible for multiple plants and remote and/or mobile equipment. It enables experts to see a far bigger picture and be at the right place at the right time.

In a field service operations environment - all of the high value mobile resources can be connected wirelessly to a centralized management application. Wireless data collection is now easily available. The bigger challenge is integrating all of this data into a management application that has the business intelligence capacity to recommend how best to use all of the incoming data for optimal efficiencies.

I gave several examples of organizations using this network-centric approach in the article Street Parking and Mobile Data Solutions. One example was of a city using sensors in street parking sites that wirelessly report when they are available. The reports could be viewed on iPhone applications. Another example was of the giant cement company in Kenya called LaFarge that was implementing a SAP solution and mobile appliction to provide better tracking and visibility into materials coming in and inventory going out to the customer.

If you would like to discuss the concept of network-centric field services in more detail please contact me.

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Kevin Benedict
Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant, Mobile Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***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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Mobile Expert Interview Series - Jane and Keelin Glendon of HotButtons

I had the pleasure of interviewing two mobile experts this week, Jane Glendon and her daughter Keelin Glendon. Jane founded her mobile software application company, HotButton Solutions, http://www.hotbuttonsolutions.com/index.html, in Calgary, Alberta in 2000. HotButton Solutions focuses on mobile field data collection applications for the oil and gas industry. The focus is deep, as in deep mud and snow.

Jane and Keelin have a lot of great stories to tell about selling and supporting mobile applications in the wilderness. I learned that moose gather on the roads to lick the salt, bears like to scratch their backs on oil well heads and a rugged handheld computer screen only survives 4 whacks with a hammer and nail to break. I also learned that northern Canadian oil workers have been known to express their dislike for new technologies by throwing ruggedized handheld computers into a moving compressor fan (it still worked), and that clever oil workers customize mobile applications to keep track of animals and game they see along the road in preparation for hunting season. One particular oil well inspector developed a golf course along his oil well inspection run/path. This is the kind of work for me!

HotButton sales calls often require taking an airplane to a remote northern airstrip and renting a 4x4, or driving 9 hours through the wilderness to train oil patch workers on mobile applications. Keelin, who does much of the onsite training and sales calls in the cold northern oil patches of Canada considers mud, snow, seasons and storms before booking her travel. Before driving to some locations on remote one-way roads, Keelin must radio ahead to warn oil tankers coming down the mountain.

Jobsites have buildings with names like the doghouse, compressor shack, dehydration building and field office. These buildings have been known to collect bullet holes during hunting seasons. Stray dogs are known to make oil camps and field offices home and co-habit alongside the local bears that are given pet names by the workers.

The mobile application users are oil patch workers that have a wide variety of responsibilities and support many different business processes all on one rugged handheld computer. The same worker is responsible for a variety of tasks like the following:

• Checking pressure gauges and documenting the readings
• PVR – production volume reports
• Conditional assessments
• Rust inspections
• Leak inspections
• Safety and environmental compliance inspections
• Maintenance inspections of equipment, machines, buildings, pipelines and vehicles
• Site inspections (brush, grass, trees, etc.)
• Work orders

The working conditions are often cold, dark, wild, isolated and surrounded by flammable fuels. Keelin brings rubber boots along on her visits. There are more moose than people and IS - Intrinsically Safe ruggedized handhelds are required. These are devices developed to function safely around flammable environments. That means no mobile phone capabilities. I guess mobile phones can ignite fuels… I learn something new every day. For the most part the ruggedized handheld computers are docked in the job shack to synchronize the collected data with the home office.

How do they know when the weather is too cold for the handheld computers to function? When the oil patch worker freezes.

One example of the importance of having real time data visibility is a recent incident where the oil production volumes reported to the central office did not match the delivered oil volumes. The central office activated an alert and the oil patch workers were ordered to look for an oil leak. One of the field workers quickly checked his handheld and found the missing oil volume sitting on a tanker that was preparing to depart. The alert was canceled and everyone went back to work.

HotButton's mobile data collection software application is called HotLeap and includes a Universal Data Translator, Staging database, Bullseye and OrgAdmin. Jane has even received a patent for her technology. It is designed to work with Windows Mobile and Windows CE devices.

One mobile client application can support dozens of different oil field applications and business processes from one common menu on the mobile handheld. These mobile data collection applications most often sync to multiple database applications in the back office. There is deep vertical expertise and experience built into these oil patch applications that is relevant in both Canada and in the USA.

Jane's next step, as a mobile software entrepreneur, is to find a larger software company that can help them go global through a partnership or possibly by acquiring them. She says her global oil company customers love their mobile applications but prefer a vendor with a global presence and more resources than HotButtons has today.

This article is the first in a series of interviews with mobile industry experts. If you have a mobile expert or unusual character that you would recommend for an interview please contact me.

The next article in this series is called Nokia's John Choate. He works in the mobile Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality programs at Nokia. Yes, it is as interesting as it sounds...stay tuned.

Google and Mobile Phones - Analysis

"It is understandable that Google wants to be a serious player in mobile communications," writes Martin Peers in an article on December 15th, 2009 in the Wall Street Journal. However, he follows by saying, "It is unclear why it (Google) needs to sell mobile phones to dominate mobile search."

Lets discuss: Google Goggle allows you to take a picture of a landmark or building and then automatically combine the photo with the integrated GPS coordinates to conduct an automatic query that displays information about it. This convergence of technology, GPS radio, digital camera and wireless radio to connect to the Internet are all hardware components in the phone.

The GPS and digital camera components are mobile data collectors. The information collected is used to perform automated searches. These searches can bring up the details of the objects in the photos as well as other choices for food, hotels, shopping etc, near that location. The LBS (location based services) where local companies pay money to have their presence and products marketed is the profit center.

Google would also recognize value in knowing who owns the phone. As the manufacturer and vendor, they would have a good reason to know who owns the phone. They could then connect this information with what they know about you from your existing Google Accounts. They could combine what they already know about your browsing habits and interests in the virtual world with your travels, habits and interests in the physical.

I can fully understand Google wanting to control and own the mobile data collection hardware. It will drive mobile marketing that they want going through their search engine and LBS business now and in the future.

Is it a bit creepy? Yes.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: @krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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Geospatially Aware Mobile Inspection Applications for Military and Commercial Use

I have spent many years working with mobile application development tools. Each of the vendors I have known speak about the simplicity and speed of using their tools to develop and implement mobile applications. It is, for the most part, marketing speak.

Developing a mobile application is as simple as the database schema of the business application in which it will be integrated. If it is a simple data collection form that can be integrated with a simple spreadsheet or database, then it is fairly easy and will usually take days or a few weeks to develop. However, if the user wants a mobile version of their ERP, then I hope they have a few months and a significant budget. The point is, most mobile applications that synchronize with back-office enterprise database applications are not easy and simple and this is a problem for companies that need to inspect a wide variety of things.

I have witnessed over and over the challenges an inspection company has with mobile applications that run on handheld computers. The applications take longer to develop and cost more than the inspection task or project justifies. As a result, the inspection company continues to do it by hand. In another scenario, one inspection project may justify the time and expense of developing a mobile inspection application, but the next project does not. As a result, the inspection services company continues to use paper inspection forms on the majority of their projects. That is the economic reality, at least until now.

Recently I read an article called "Kenaz and Touch Inspect: Must-Have Products for the Warfighter" written by Don Jewell. Jewel writes articles for GPS World focused on Defense and the military. He has spent more than thirty years in the Unites States Air Force, where he was involved with GPS systems from their inception, either as a test system evaluator or user. He served as a Commander at Schriever AFB, the home of GPS, and retired as the deputy chief scientist at Air Force Space Command.

In Jewell's article he speaks of a mobile solution called Touch Inspect by Mobile Epiphany. It is essentially a computerized, geospatially aware, data-collection application with an amazing user interface. "The user interface matters to our warfighters!" Jewells writes, "because one of the biggest complaints from our warfighters concerning military user equipment (MUE) such as the Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver (PLGR) and the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR) is the user interface."

Mobile applications for the military need to be geospatially aware. I wrote an article called Network-Centric Mobile Field Force Automation that explores this requirement in detail from both a military and commercial perspective.

Touch Inspect is unique. It focuses on geospatially-aware inspections and provides a powerful pre-built platform in which custom mobile inspection applications can be developed in just hours. It is unique in that no coding or programming is required and the solution is designed by a company that has a deep history in the electronic games industry. This is quickly apparent when you see the intense graphics and sophisticated features that I have never seen before in a Windows Mobile application.

Jewell writes, "Touch Inspect allows you to build databases on the fly for inspecting things, and I do mean just about anything. But more than that, it is a flexible, user configurable database system that can be adapted for so many uses that are critical to our warfighters and first responders."

Jewell sees applications for this software in almost every aspect of a warfighter’s day, starting with running the various checklists they need to run for weapons, radios, vehicles, and GPS devices. With GPS devices and GIS mapping information right on the device (in other words, you don’t need an Internet connection to see your geospatial maps like you would using something like Google Maps), this new software really shines because it incorporates the warfighter’s current GPS position and time — or the asset’s GPS position — into every database entry, with photos if necessary. And this system uses the topographical maps or aerial images you want it to use, not just simple street maps. Plus, when the computer is once again in Internet, LAN, or WLAN range, it automatically updates the server at HQ and downloads new information automatically without any user interaction.

I recently wrote an article about the use of rugged handheld computers and mobile inspection applications following the devastating fires that killed 173 people last year in Australia. In this case the police and emergency responders had an immediate need for a mobile inspection application that was geospatically aware. This immediate need for a custom mobile inspection application could not be solved by taking weeks and months to develop a mobile application. They needed it now! Touch Inspect has all the appearances of solving requirements for near-real-time dynamic and custom mobile inspection applications.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
www.twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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Mobile Applications for Fighting Crime, Reporting Potholes and Birdwatching

Several years ago I consulted with a company in The Netherlands on a city government project to enable all city workers to instantly become the eyes and ears of the police during emergencies. It worked like this - an alert would be sent to all city workers that had government issued phones and were located in a certain geographic area. This alert would ask them to look for a specific car, person or suspicious activity.

This project was clever, efficient but also a little creepy. If the police are chasing a bad guy through the city, then asking for all city workers within a certain area to keep their eyes and ears open is efficient, since it is in all of our best interests to stop bad guys, but in the wrong hands creepy. From a resource utilization, a great idea. This project was an early example of location based services (LBS). If your phone is in this particular zone, keep your eyes open for this bad guy.

This summer Microsoft acquired EveryBlock, a company that feeds local crime and health inspection information to news organizations. With GPS enabled phones, crimes can be reported that are instantly shown on maps and available for the public to see. Instead of just using city employees you are turning the entire populace, at least those with smartphones, into your eyes and ears.

Mobile technologies with integrated GPS are helping the public to be even more involved in the management and priorities of local government as this NPR article describes. The Citizens Connect iPhone app is part of the Boston Mayor's strategy for working closer with citizen's to help manage the city. The program is called Citizens Connect. The Citizens Connect iPhone app is targeted at enlisting Boston residents and visitors to gather information about the physical state of the city (See photo above about pothole reporting).

I am very impressed with these applications and their utility. I consulted on another project where a non-profit organization was taking inventory, using smartphones, of trash and abandoned vehicles in particular neighborhoods. This information was then synchronized into a database and clean-up efforts were organized based upon this information.

Another interesting application that I read about yesterday is called Birdseye. This is an iPhone application for birdwatchers, but it is not just a static reference application. It uses the integrated GPS features of the iPhone to identify the location of bird sightings. This information gets uploaded to Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology and its massive eBird database of bird sightings. This information is then distributed to all subscribed members of the eBird email distribution list. Beware of reporting a rare bird in your backyard. In minutes you may have hundreds of strange people in safari attire and binoculars elbowing their way onto your property.

From a mobile technology standpoint, many of these iPhone applications are similar. They involve mobile data collection with integrated GPS coordinates that are uploaded to a publicly available Internet based application that distributes this information to subscribed members and the collected data is shown on a map.

Have you seen other clever applications? Please share them by adding them to the comments below.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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