Workforce Mobility and MEAPs

I had an interesting call with a company today that is involved in real workforce mobility. They have a solution called Total Employee Mobility. Here is a brief description from their website.

"Now more than ever, companies rely on the mobility of their employees to realize new opportunities and growth. Employee travel, relocation, international assignments, and virtual office work make business happen. However in most organizations, each component of workforce mobility is overseen by a different department, making it very difficult to manage−much less evaluate−the return on investment. This fragmented approach to employee mobility results in lost opportunities to reduce costs, gain efficiencies, and enhance employee satisfaction."

They help companies manage mobile workforces by managing the entire "mobility" component. Everything from corporate cars, mileage, expense reports to corporate aircraft and remote overseas offices. I never cease to be amazed at the fascinating niche market businesses out there.

At the end of my conversation I realized there was a lot I could learn from them. They have studied the costs factors associated with workforce mobility for over 70 years, long before iPhones, Android and turn-by-turn navigatin. Many of the items they consider had never occurred to me. Their advice to the IRS helps set the mileage reimbursement levels set by the IRS each year.

This mobility company's ROI is as follows, "By centralizing oversight of a company’s total employee mobility programs, both companies and their employees gain many advantages.

This company is now active in developing mobile and smartphone technologies to continue and enhance the value added services they provide their clients' mobile workforces.

I can't help but think of MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms) in the same way. Until all of your enterprise mobility applications are centrally managed through a standardized MEAP it is hard to provide effective oversight and reduce TCO (total cost of ownership).

A related article on MEAPs can be found here.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless 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 and as such I work with, and have worked with, many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Movitas to Provide Mobile Marketing and Communication Services to TravelCom 2010

I know the folks at Movitas and they are developing some very interesting mobile solutions for location centric businesses such as hotels, resorts and conferences.

Collegeville, PA – February 10, 2010: Movitas, the leading mobile communication, marketing and commerce platform for the travel, conference and hospitality industry, has been selected to provide mobile marketing and mobile communication services for the U.S. Travel Association’s premier travel industry conference and trade show “TravelCom 2010” to be held March 9-11 at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, TX.

The TravelCom mobile platform, provided by Movitas, will provide information and offers during the show and allow attendees to interact with speakers and exhibitors in real-time, via any type of web-enabled mobile phone. The TravelCom mobile marketing and communications capabilities include an always up-to-date mobile website (featuring the show news of the day, session schedules, Fairmont Hotel floor plans, as well as speaker and exhibitor profiles), integrated social media to enable everyone to interact and experience the show via Twitter and Flickr feeds, and a text message system providing alerts, speaker updates and special offers.

As always, TravelCom covers the entire travel distribution and eCommerce food chain. However this year mobile media strategies are receiving more attention than ever before. For example, TravelCom will leverage mobile technology to allow attendees to influence session content during the show.

“With a stronger focus on online marketing, social media, mobile media and online commerce strategies, we decided not only to tell, but to show TravelCom attendees how mobile can become part of the travel industry’s business processes,” said Ben Isenberg, Chief Operating Officer at Vantage Strategy Consulting, producer of TravelCom. “Everyone involved in the show will get a first-hand look at the future of mobile business and Movitas’ approach to solving some of our industry’s challenges.”

About Movitas
Movitas is a leading mobile communication, marketing and commerce platform for location-centric businesses such as hotels, resorts and conferences. It provides a suite of solutions designed to drive revenue, improve the customer experience, manage mobile marketing campaigns, and deliver mobile business processes. Solutions include content management, messaging, commerce, logistics, workflow, and internet based administrative tools that can integrate into property management (PMS), central reservation (CRS) and point of sale (POS) systems. For more information visit: www.movitas.com. Also follow on Twitter at http://twitter.com/movitas.

About TravelCom
TravelCom is the only eCommerce conference designed by the travel industry for the travel industry. TravelCom elicits the most actionable, practical and current insights from the industry’s most senior thought leaders and speakers. Their expert knowledge offers insight and research into the entire travel distribution and eCommerce food chain; including distribution, strategy, marketing and technology tool sets. TravelCom is owned by the U.S. Travel Association and is being produced by Vantage Strategy. For more information visit www.travelcomexpo.org.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless 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 and as such I work with, and have worked with, many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms, SAP and Marketing

Yesterday I was reading Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms. It was interesting to me that one of the points Gartner considers before including a MEAP vendor in their report is marketing. They consider the following:

1. Success at marketing (I am guessing it is measured by sales?)
2. Market awareness (name recognition within a target market)
3. Marketing strategy (if Gartner is convinced you have a good strategy)
4. Your ability to recruit a good partner ecosystem and support it through marketing

Think about it. You invest millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man/woman hours into your products, middleware, synchronization technologies, SAP integration methodologies, databases, device management dashboards, rapid application development environments and multi-channel support for dozens of mobile devices, but that is not enough. Gartner is going to evaluate your marketing before including you in their report.

Gartner understands what many smart engineers have not yet learned. A better mouse trap does not sell itself or pay the expenses - sales do. Unless a comprehensive marketing plan is designed, developed and successfully implemented you will not gain sufficient mind share and market share quick enough to remain viable in this fast changing market.

It almost seems like SAP is holding a marketing Olympics for their mobility partners. They have chosen to partner with a handful of companies like Sky Technologies, Syclo, Sybase, RIM and ClickSoftware. Many of these companies have overlapping mobility solutions, but SAP seems to want to invite their partners to compete on the marketing field and see which one comes out on top.

I enjoy a good game of strategy. Although, I can feel the pain that passionate software engineers must feel. They have dedicated their life to developing a progammer's MEAP masterpiece, but the winner is determined by the folks in the marketing department with the expense accounts and travel budgets.


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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless 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 a mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert and as such I work with, and have worked with, some of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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AT&T FamilyMap App Treating Your Kids Like a Truck

AT&T has announced the release of their new application called AT&T FamilyMap App. It is a GPS vehicle tracking solution, except it is attached to your kids. Rather than mounting a GPS unit under the dashboard of your vehicle, it is inserted into your child's pocket or backpack.

Fleet managers (i.e. moms and dads) can logon to a website to see the locations of their kids, monitor their comings and goings and time spent at each location. In this article I describe why fleet managers use these applications, but I am not sure I want to attempt to describe why a parent would use it. I have my own kids that just might stumble across this article.

In this article I wrote several months ago, I provided a list of 39 reasons a business might want to invest in GPS fleet tracking. However, I need your help coming up with a list of similar reasons parents should invest in GPS kid tracking.

I look forward to your comments.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Consultant

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 a mobility and Web 2.0 marketing consultant and as such I work with, and have worked with, some of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Mobile Strategy Seminar - Sky Technologies

I came across this announcement today and it is likely to be of interest to many of you. With more than 10 years of experience in Mobilizing SAP with customers in 60 countries.Sky Technologies have developed a mobile framework that manages all mobile applications within your existing SAP system

Join us on February 18th to learn how to design a mobile strategy that will support your business needs today and will evolve to support your business needs of tomorrow.

In this seminar, you will learn how to:

• Define your own mobile strategy
• Realize the benefits of adopting a mobile framework inside your SAP landscape
• Understand the skills and resource required
• Identify which applications to mobilze for optimum efficiency
• Avoid solutions that provide partial mobile device support
• Advantages of middleware-free solutions

Register Today to ensure you hear the latest information on SAP mobility solutions.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***Full Disclosure: I am a mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert and as such I work with, and have worked with, many of the companies mentioned in my blogs.
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iPhones, Satellites, DVRs and Home Breakins

One month ago: We were half way across town driving to a friend's house to watch the Boise State football team take on TCU in the Fiesta Bowl when I remembered that I had not programmed our DVR to record the game for posterity. I reluctantly confessed this to my wife. She pondered which of our neighbors we could call to break into our house and schedule our DVR to record it. We ultimately decided to just buy the DVD of the game, since teaching our neighbors to breakin to our home did not seem prudent.

Today: I discovered that DirecTV has an iPhone application that enables you to access your DVR account and manage your recordings remotely! OK, I am not the first to discover this, it seems I am user 1,000,001.

It is very intriguing to me, that I can be sitting in Starbuck's while sending a programming request from my iPhone up into outer space where it hits a circling satellite and bounces back down to my satellite dish, travels on a cable from my roof to my living room and programs the DRV box. I started bouncing requests up and down like a basketball. My wife and daughter could not believe dad learned how to program the DVR.

Never again will we need to ask a neighbor to break into our home to program our DVR.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***Full Disclosure: I am a mobility and Web 2.0 marketing consultant and as such I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned here.
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Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP, Part 3

Mobile micro-apps seem to be the hot topic now days at SAP. These are small mobile applications for iPhones, Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile. These applications can be limited and provide access to one part of one SAP application and business process, or expose an entire business process. For example, travel requests and expense report approvals can be part of a business process that is exposed in a mobile micro-apps.

In the case of an Expense Report approval, a manager can be alerted to an expense report that needs approved before it can be paid. The manager can access the report through the micro-app on his/her iPhone, review it and approve or reject it. There is not much to these applications, but they are novel today and will continue to evolve into more powerful mobile applications.

SAP has some big ambitions about adding mobile users to their systems. They are encouraging these kind of mobile micro-applications to extend functionality to more users. They would even like to see ways that consumers (i.e. the masses) could access appropriate and relevant business processes within SAP systems -think tracking shipments, ordering products, checking University schedules, interacting with financial services companies, etc, on mobile devices.

Here are a few of the challenges with mobile micro-applications that should be considered:

• How do you manage mobile micro-apps in a large enterprise?
• Since mobile micro-apps can be developed for just about any part of any SAP business process there could quickly be dozens or even hundreds of mobile micro-apps springing up.
• Does the enterprise open the doors to supporting all popular mobile devices, or does the enterprise try to standardize so micro-apps can be easier for IT to manage?
• Many mobile micro-app vendors are considering SaaS business models. This means mobile micro-app users could be expensing these costs, rather than running them through a formal budget process. Is that a problem? Who approves it?
• What criteria is the IT department of a large enterprise going to use in order to select quality mobile micro-app vendors? By their nature mobile micro-apps can be developed by very small software development companies without a lot of experience or infrastructure.
• Some vendors of mobile micro-apps provide application development environments that enable non-programmers to develop mobile micro-apps. This is very cool, but now you have the potential of business users importing and exporting data from SAP database systems. Some DBAs would have a problem with that.
• I can see the scenario where an SAP user downloads and installs 5 different mobile micro-apps onto their device. If these micro-apps were from different vendors, there could be 5 different GUIs, different mobile middleware involved, different security systems, different integration methodologies, etc.

I love the idea of mobile micro-apps that provide the mobile workforce with access to appropriate SAP business processes for the purpose of working more efficiently. The point of this article is not to deter mobile micro-app vendors or enterprises from implementing them, but simply to suggest there are a few things that should be considered.

One strategy is to use a MEAP, mobile enterprise application platform. MEAPs provide a framework for managing many different mobile applications using a standardized methodology, using standardized development environments, standardized security, standardized synchronization methodologies, standardized integration processes and leveraging application code across multiple mobile devices. An example of a MEAP is Sky Technologies.

This article is part of a series entitled Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP. Part 1 and 2 of this series can be found at the links below:

Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP, Part 1

Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP, Part 2

Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP, Part 4
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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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The Quiet Mobility Company - Sybase

Last March SAP and Sybase(the quiet company) announced a co-innovation partnership to deliver mobility to iPhones, Blackberrys and Windows Mobile devices. Read this excerpt from a March 9, 2009 press release:

"The two companies are co-innovating and collaborating to deliver the new SAP® Business Suite software for the first time to iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and other devices by integrating it with Sybase industry-leading mobile enterprise application platform."

My question is where is Sybase? Why are they so quiet? I see them making record profits and issuing an occasional press release, but where are the mobility evangelists? Gartner ranks them number 1 on their Magic Quadrant, but I see more publicity from 10 person start-ups than from iAnywhere or Sybase. Are they engaged in a skunk works project that will explode onto the mobility market in a gigantic marketing extravaganza like Apple? It seems they like to make these potentially interesting announcements and then return to their quiet cave.

Here is the problem with Sybase's silence. It gives the mobility stage to others. This stage is where thought leaders participate in educating the market. It is where visionaries paint new images of what is possible. Sybase's history and customer base give them an opportunity to take the stage. I just don't see them doing it. IT decision makers will forget about them.

How many of you know the name of a visionary in Sybase's mobility group? I am sure they exist, I just never see them leave the cave. I don't see them taking the center stage and commanding our attention.

Perhaps I am just missing them and they are all around me. Do you see them everywhere and I don't? I read Ian Thain's blog often, but are there other voices from Sybase? I look forward to your comments so I can be pointed in the right direction.

I know Sybase and iAnywhere. I did not know John F Kennedy. They have some great mobile middleware technology, but the market is not going to wait for them to come out of their cave and tell us about it.

I see it in companies that are big and have a long history. Newcomers and young visionaries within the company do not feel empowered to write or speak. They don't feel worthy of taking the podium where the company founders once stood decades before and shared ideas and visions. Why? They always feel they will say something wrong and the founders will jump out of their graves. The result is a quiet company.

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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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In Remembrance of the PDA

How long has it been since you stopped using the term PDA? It occurred to me the other day that the PDA has played an important part in my career and I should not let it pass away without a ceremony of some sort.

The PDA has been replaced by iEverything and smartphones. However, it was an important gadget that paved the way for the mobile technology advances of today. It opened our minds to the possibilities of keeping on task, even with poor memories. It helped generations of soccer moms remember where each child was dropped off and when they needed to be recovered. It allowed us men to seem organized despite ourselves.

PDAs started the concepts of software applications, music and photos in our pockets. PDAs kicked-off companies like Palm and motivated people like me to begin blogging.

Let us be silent for 30 seconds in rememberance of the PDA. We can quietly bow our heads and reach down into our pockets and try to remember the last place we used our stylus before it disappeared.

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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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Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP, Part 2

There are several different categories of mobile applications that work with or integrate with SAP.

1. Those that provide real-time mobile views of complete SAP applications
2. Those that provide mobile queries and reports on SAP data
3. Those that provide custom mobile forms for subsets of SAP business processes based upon roles and responsibilities
4. Complete, disconnected mobile applications (like work orders) that synchronize with a field force automation solution (e.g. Sky Technologies, Sybase, Syclo, ClickSoftware, etc) on the backend where it is integrated with SAP
5. Custom mobile applications for inspections, assessments, plant maintenance and other niche requirements that may be synchronized with custom databases that are integrated with SAP databases.

It is important to understand which category or categories your solutions fit, and how this impacts your ability to leverage the SAP sales and marketing organizations to help grow your business.

The different categories of mobile solutions and architectures listed above often have different users. A field service technician needs a connected/disconnected mobile application, while the administrator may simply need mobile access to the SAP ERP. You must recognize who your user is before you start marketing. What department's budget will pay for a white collar worker's mobile access? Who are the decision makers? What are their priorities? Is it saving money, making money or doing more with less?

Can you think of other mobile application categories that I missed?

Read Advice to Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP, Part 1 here, Part 3 here and Part 4.

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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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