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.”

Social Networking, ClickContact and Enterprise Mobility

Yesterday, I wrote an article about ClickSoftware's integration between their ClickContact application and Facebook.  This is a big deal, so I want to comment more.  First let's take a look at what ClickContact does:

ClickContact enables service organizations to put the management of the service experience into the hands of their customers by providing self-service appointment booking and updating over the Internet, including automatic customer notifications, and the option for a post-service survey.   ClickContact allows a customer to schedule a service call for themselves, without the help of any of the organization's customer support staff.

ClickContact's functionality is now available in an application frame for inclusion on a service company's Facebook page.  This means their customers can schedule appointments, change appointments, and receive appointment updates all on Facebook.  Service companies will not be required to create their own websites in order to provide this functionality. 

The Facebook application enables the service organization to send customers automatic updates via email, text and voice message, etc., including confirmations, updates and estimated arrival time of the service resource to the service location.  This can all be received on the customer's mobile device.  Changes that the customer makes to their schedule on Facebook will then be reflected on the mobile applications of the service technicians via ClickSoftware's software for the service sector.

"The most successful service businesses tightly link the human experience with the social web," said Simon Morris, of ClickSoftware.  This is a very interesting model.  It is one of the first examples I have seen of an enterprise mobility company integrating popular social networking sites into enterprise applications. 
If you know of other enterprise applications that are integrated with popular social networking sites please share them with us.

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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
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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.