Mobile Phones, Cameras and Enterprise Mobility

Touch Inspect

I believe that enterprises are not yet taking full advantage of the cameras and video capabilities on mobile devices.  I also believe the saying, "A picture paints a thousand words."  The attached image of the fire hydrant as seen in the mobile application, Touch Inspect from Mobile Epiphany demonstrates how a quick photo, with quick photo editing tools, can communicate a great deal of information.


I also predict that as more applications like the iPhone's FaceTime become available you will see more mobile applications within the services sector integrate them into their solutions.  Not only can these digital cameras be used to record work, but connected to a GPS enabled devices, they can help document compliance, monitor SLAs, help in training and provide real-time and onsite expert advice.

This 2nd image demonstrates how I believe a junior service technician could utilize a live video feed to communicate with an experienced expert back at the office.  The expert can watch the live video feed from the remote jobsite and quickly help the less experienced service technician complete their work.


What do you think?  Do you think digital cameras and video capabilities on mobile devices are still under utilized?


Whitepaper of Note: Networked Field Services



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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
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group 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.

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of February 15, 2011

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile retailing applications and mobile marketing applications that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s M2M News Monthly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly

Google’s strong fourth quarter earnings proved that it is now firmly ensconced in e-commerce, and also showed that, with its Android operating system and related apps, it is smoothly transitioning to the mobile world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/technology/21google.html?src=busln

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Mobile commerce may be maturing at a quicker rate than many experts have predicted, according to a report from Adobe Scene7. Sixty-two percent of consumers with web connected mobile devices have purchased merchandise in a wide range of product categories using their mobile devices.

http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/02/10/62-consumers-have-purchased-goods-mobile-device

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Three quarters of U.S. brands surveyed by the Association of National Advertisers/Mobile Marketing Association say they plan to up their spending on mobile marketing initiatives by some 60 percent this year, while close to 90 percent will deploy mobile marketing initiatives.

http://brand-e.biz/could-do-better-on-mobile-marketing_11526.html

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By the end of 2011, an estimated one billion people around the world will be connected to the mobile web and 50 percent of all Americans will own a smartphone.

The Biggest Challenges in Enterprise Mobility Today

On Thursday, February 17th, at 1 PM EST, I will be opening a webinar with a discussion on the biggest challenges in enterprise mobility today.  Not just my opinions, but the opinions of over a dozen mobility experts that I have interviewed recently. I will be the first presenter, and then handing it over to Steve Levy, CEO of Pyxis Mobile to discuss The Latest Thinking and Strategies for Deploying Flexible Mobile Solutions - The Four Big Issues for Mobilizing SAP and Other Enterprise Systems.I invite you to participate by registering here.


***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group 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.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: 10seconds Software's Greg Donaldson, Part 2

Greg Donaldson

This is Part 2 of an interview with Greg Donaldson of 10seconds Software.  You can read Part 1 here.

Kevin: What do companies fail to plan for when implementing mobility?
Greg: First, let me explain that we provide both a desktop and a mobile version of our software. It seems that companies still use the desktop the most. Consider the entire work week. If a manager is traveling for two days out of five, they may need a mobile application for two days, but they would rather use their laptop or desktop during the three days in the office. A company needs to think of the entire work week. Many of our applications are simplified versions of an ERP. Managers would rather access SAP through our simplified interfaces. They don’t need to see the entire SAP ERP, just the parts they need to see in order to do their jobs.

Kevin: What advice do you have for companies just starting down an enterprise mobility path?
Greg: 1) Understand how you will connect to devices and how you will secure them, 2) Start with a simple mobile application and get an easy win (a good success), 3) Focus on a great user experience, and 4) Look for a packaged app (or off the shelf) to start. Building a complete enterprise quality mobile application yourself requires a huge amount of effort, and much of it has no business value for a one time development project.  Find a packaged application for a quick and easy implementation.

Kevin: How important is mobile device management and security?
Greg: Very important. Have the right infrastructure in place to protect your data before you implement mobility. There are thousands of ways to connect to a back end system, so the company first needs to decide how they want to connect.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: 10seconds Software's Greg Donaldson, Part 1

10seconds Software's
Greg Donaldson

I want to introduce Greg Donaldson from 10seconds Software to you. He is the Founder and Director of the Australian mobility company, 10seconds Software, a company he started two years ago and now serves as the chief solution architect.

Greg has been working around enterprise mobility for the past five years and has spent much of his career working in the banking industry, but also has experience working in the RFID and barcode space.

Note:  These are not Greg's exact words, rather my notes from our interview.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Greg: I ride my mountain bike to work and carry my four year old daughter to school on a bike seat so am careful what I carry. I carry an iPhone, iPad and a Dell laptop.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Greg: My Twitter app is used constantly, and so is WhatsApp (chatting app), Viber (VoIP app).

Kevin: Do you use your mobile device to buy things?
Greg: Yes, I buy music and apps.

Kevin: How many computing devices do you have in your home?
Greg: Four, two laptops, an iPad and an iPhone.

Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 14, 2011

Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Kevin’s M2M News Monthly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly

The City of Sacramento recently spent over $100,000 on a GPS fleet management system. Many tax payers questioned if the new fleet tracking system was a luxury or a necessity? Turns out, that using the fleet management system, the City identified ways to cut fuel costs by over $60,000 in just one month.

http://www.fieldtechnologies.com/city-of-sacramento-cuts-60000-per-month-in-gas-costs-with-gps-fleet-management-system/

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Last week, Lehigh announced a deal with StarPath Technologies for a system that will allow students to track the locations of university buses on their phones or computers.

http://media.www.thebrownandwhite.com/media/storage/paper1233/news/2011/02/11/News/New-Gps.Tracking.On.Buses.Benefits.Students-3975741.shtml

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced last week that it has given 510(k) clearance to a new mobile radiology application developed by Cleveland-based MIM Software. The software, called Mobile MIM, allows physicians to view medical images on Apple's iPhone and iPad mobile devices.

Weird, Odd and Strange Mobility Series: Cameras in Skull, Wireless Confessions and Best Bathrooms

The professor installed the video camera in the back of his skull, but the camera caused awkward social interactions and was painful.  It was like having eyes in the back of your head, but no one wanted him around.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/10/nyu-professor-unsurprisingly-removes-camera-from-the-back-of-his/

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The Catholic Church (in Indiana, USA) has now approved a mobile confession application for the iPhone.  The mobile application was developed with the help of Catholic priests, and enables Catholics to keep track of their sins.  It even helps identify possible sins based on a user’s age, sex and marital status.  I wonder if you can password protect it?  I hope so.  I wonder if this involves real time connectivity, or is it synchronized in batch?  What happens if there is an untimely accident before the data is synchronized?

http://unplugged.rcrwireless.com/index.php/20110208/app-corner/6921/catholic-church-approves-confession-iphone-app/

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Mobile Expert Interview Series: Acando's Hans Nygaard, Part 2

Hans Nygaard

This is Part 2 in of my interview with Hans Nygaard.  You can read Part 1 here.

Kevin: What are some of the most surprising trends you are saw in mobility in 2010?
Hans: Personally I have to say that I am surprised by the fact that the large vendors (SAP, Sybase, Oracle, QlikView) still push hard on BI solutions for smartphones. The UI/UX doesn’t lend itself to a task like that. It looks sexy, but if you are running an important business function, why would you need to see dashboards, cut and slice BW data etc. on a 3.5” screen? They are pushing a segment that is served (well) by laptops with 3G wireless – and a keyboard!

A second surprising trend for me was that most companies emerged from the financial crisis ready to take on new IT projects. Yet a surprisingly small number of companies (in Scandinavia) have enterprise mobility on the agenda. In transportation, supply chain, field service, maintenance, QA, etc., we continue to demonstrate dramatic business cases, yet many top managers seem unaware of the gold lying at their feet! I think that the processes mobility can improve are either not core to the company (i.e. internal maintenance and inspection) or not sexy enough for decision makers to bother about! Often the process ownership is in middle management, and it’s not in their job description to be visionary.

Kevin: What are some of the biggest challenges you see in mobility today?
Hans: Awareness in the enterprise market. Mobility is core to many companies, but not yet on management's agenda. Also, most of our enterprise users own a smartphone and are pampered by snazzy app stores, where apps compete in looking sexy and offer the best UX. To offer similarly appealing enterprise apps is a real challenge and user adoption and project success depends on it.

Kevin: How are enterprise mobility implementations different from other typical IT projects?
Hans: We work exclusively in the SAP market space. Mobile projects often fail to reach their success criteria when done exclusively by the SAP project organization; too much ASAP (accelerated SAP Implementation methodology) does not work well for SOA environment.

Kevin: What do companies fail to plan for when implementing mobility?
Hans: If they have no SOA experience, they fail to realize how many links there are in the mobility business ‘service chain’, from cell phone plans to VPN certificates over middleware application management, help desk training, etc. Most are used to operating just the monolithic ERP and office apps and their respective GUIs.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Acando's Hans Nygaard, Part 1

 Acando's Hans Nygaard

I recently had the privelege of interviewing Hans Nygaard from Acando, a consultancy company with over 1,000 employees in six European countries.  SAP is one of Acando's most important partners.

Hans is the Manager for Mobile Solutions and focuses most of his time on blue collar and field services kinds of mobile projects.  They work on a lot of 100-200 user projects, but are currently working on a large deployment that includes 5,000 service technicians in 14 countries.

Hans has been working in the SAP ecosystem since 2003 and on SAP related mobility projects since 2007.  He has a wife and two kids and lives 45 minutes outside of Copenhagen.

Note:  This interview consists of both written and verbal responses from Hans.

Kevin:  Since you have been involved in SAP enterprise mobility since 2007, what are your thoughts about SAP's acquisition of Sybase in 2010?
Hans: I have mixed feelings.  It was a lot of money.  Sybase has great offline and push mobile technology, so that is good, but I am still confused about how Sybase's and SAP's middleware will merge into one mobile middleware solution.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Hans: iPhone 4, iPad and a laptop (PC).

MacBook Pro, Safari, Pages and Blogging Headaches

Any Advice?

You may have noticed that I have been struggling with some font and formatting issues this week in my articles.  After a lifetime on PCs, I have purchased a MacBook Pro.  Along with the MacBook Pro, I am trying to use Pages (and Word for Macs) and Safari to access and post to my blogging platform.  I am having many annoying formatting issues.  The Apple environment is introducing all kinds of junk code which is messing up my text formatting.

Any advice? 

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group 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.