.KEYWORD nhand
.FLYINGHEAD THE BUSINESS CASE
.TITLE Why enterprise handheld computing is right for your company
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Are you standing at the edge of the mobile computing divide, afraid to lead your company into the unknown? Well, fear no more, because Kevin J. Kelly has the answers you’re looking for as he makes a strong business case for adopting Palm handhelds into your enterprise. He also provides some great insight into how to integrate mobile computing into your existing enterprise infrastructures.
.AUTHOR Kevin J. Kelly
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.H1 Introducing "THE BUSINESS CASE"
When looking at enterprise solutions for Palm devices, few are found "off the shelf". Instead, many applications are custom built for individual clients. In order for you to get a good picture of the kinds of tools built, we’ll occasionally invite Palm solutions developers to showcase their own custom applications and provide you with the benefit of their hard-won expertise. In the first article of our "THE BUSINESS CASE" series, Kevin J. Kelly of nHand Solutions will show you custom applications for natural gas and quality tracking, along with an excellent analysis of the business case for mobile enterprise computing.
If you’re a Palm solutions developer with an interesting take on the future of mobile enterprise computing and unique applications, please contact us at info@palmpowerenterprise.com and maybe we’ll showcase you as well.
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Handheld computing devices have been available for over a decade. However, prior to recent advances in capabilities and overall system design, the vast majority of these handheld computing platforms have failed to gain widespread enterprise-level acceptance, except in very niche markets. Additionally, many of these systems were widely regarded as unsuitable for the corporate environment due to a lack of tools and platforms to enable full enterprise functionality, such as widespread data synchronization, secure authentication and integration with enterprise databases, and management tools.
Fortunately for today’s enterprise, the past few years have seen this environment and landscape rapidly improve into one that can readily and effectively support modern enterprise demands and operational criteria. Today’s handheld computing platforms are not only inexpensive and easy to use but they are significantly more reliable and extensible than their predecessors. As a result of these fundamental improvements, it’s finally appropriate to consider the implications of such devices on the enterprise space as a whole, and specific applications, as necessary. Another positive factor for many enterprises is that large numbers of employees already use handheld devices and have recognized their very positive benefit/cost relationship.
.H1 Enterprise business drivers and strategic advantages
Public marketplace demands and the rapid pace of technological innovation dictate that today’s sophisticated management teams must embrace new methods and mechanisms of providing their organizations with easily expandable tools to enhance existing tactical and strategic advantages. This is becoming absolutely critical in almost every space both for competitive reasons as well as on broader strategic grounds.
Many common business drivers in today’s enterprise environment include tactical issues such as the reduction of operational expenses; improving operational efficiencies; and increasing the timeliness and accuracy of data collection and dissemination. It’s also important to recognize that placing timely information in the hands of individuals who need it dramatically facilitates and improves their contribution.
Concurrently, many strategic factors are at play as well. Specifically, the ability to stay closer to your customers, vendors, prospects and partners is highly prized. Perhaps the most critical strategic advantage to be gained, though, is the ability to efficiently and effectively capture operational metrics for quick, accurate and informed strategic decision making. Properly utilized, today’s simple, yet sophisticated handheld systems can provide the comprehensive technology platform to enable your organization to maximize these tactical and strategic benefits.
As competition increases in a wide array of marketplaces and companies seek to achieve a competitive advantage, one common issue is the reduction of costs without impacting the level of service or quality. Handheld devices provide many types of organizations with an ideal platform for the capture and dissemination of information. By leveraging the compact nature of Palm handhelds and their ever-increasing ease of use, companies can cost-effectively equip large segments of the enterprise with them to meet their specific business needs and provide mission-critical role-specific and job-specific information. Considering that the average cost of a handheld device is about one tenth that of an average business PC, it’s finally feasible for organizations to put such devices into the hands of field and mobile personnel who have previously been limited to an archaic paper-based system at best. Additionally, the use of such powerful and flexible handheld devices reduces data entry errors because secure handheld units linked directly to databases can replace manual forms.
Traditional corporate solutions have included the collection of data from field or mobile personnel via paper forms, fax, or telephone. Also, due to the high cost and complexities of traditional notebook computers, the conventional computer has proven ineffective or prohibitively expensive for the collection of large amounts of data and dissemination to and from a mobile workforce. Palm devices present an ideal solution to this dilemma and offer a cost-effective solution to data capture that also increases reliability and integrity of corporate data. With the improvements in wide-area data synchronization and other enterprise-level tools, Palm handhelds can now be reasonably used to capture data in the field and transmit it to a centralized data storage facility for analysis, processing, and further dissemination.
By allowing managers and teams to more quickly and accurately communicate information across a widespread workforce, productivity can be greatly increased while critical decision-making time can be dramatically reduced. The ability to pull many data points together in a short period of time and then to be able to access and analyze them, wherever management may be located, can increase overall decision-making skills and provide a critical strategic advantage.
Currently, there are an estimated ten million handheld devices sold annually. This number is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years and current information indicates that more than half the purchasers are corporations. Due to this high acceptance of handhelds within the corporate environment (as well as the general populace) it’s possible to take advantage of their easy nature to expand the reach of your line-of-business and mission-critical applications.
As new advances in technology outpace the cost-effectiveness of hardware purchases, it becomes increasingly important to justify projects based upon a smooth and shortened turnaround for investment. Due to the low cost of handheld devices and the near infinite flexibility in implementation of software and hardware, there’s an opportunity to see a project defined and implemented on a time-scale that allows for a return on investment in an extremely short timeframe compared to other types of enterprise scale projects.
.H1 Existing enterprise infrastructures
Irrespective of ongoing technological advancement, any technological revolution will have a diminished impact if it’s not tightly integrated with the already existing or "legacy" enterprise systems. This is especially true in the handheld market; a successful handheld business solution must be tightly coupled with the existing enterprise infrastructure and current back-end systems in order to have a pronounced impact.
This close coupling and integration is imperative to create a solution that is powerful, effective, efficient, and widely accepted by the target audience. An overall solution that can leverage such a tight integration is one that truly enables the mobile enterprise and provides powerful solutions to complex business problems. The power of these types of applications lies almost entirely in the cohesiveness shared with the existing enterprise infrastructure, for it’s the (often pre-existing) infrastructure that provides the user access to mission critical, line-of-business information needed to do a better job.
In addition to effectively providing the individual with timely essential information, a tight integration allows the whole organization to effectively capture information necessary for broader competitive and strategic advantages. Unfortunately, without such a coherent integration between the handheld device and the enterprise, many benefits and efficiencies offered by handheld solutions can be reduced by orders of magnitude.
In order to be truly effective, any enterprise-level handheld solution must have solid integration with the enterprise’s back office systems and applications. It’s generally unacceptable and unreasonable to expect, demand, or impose a solution that cannot be integrated with the whole enterprise. In addressing integration, individual issues such as database replication, wide area synchronization or wireless connectivity are quickly surpassed by broader, all-encompassing issues and the accompanying solution. The complete solution must address all of these concerns and then some.
Subsequently, in order to have a complete and integrated solution, many specific factors, such as network connectivity, database and knowledge base integration, intranet resources and enterprise-level security must be carefully considered and properly addressed. Even so, the effective handheld business solution goes a step further by linking directly to corporate-level resources such as enterprise resource planning systems, sales force automation tools, manufacturing and planning resources, and more.
Furthermore, an effective handheld business solution should not completely abandon the ways and skill sets of the past, but should allow your teams, at all levels, to leverage their skills, knowledge, and experiences. Implementing an enterprise-level handheld solution should be a constructive process, improving upon the existing infrastructures, not a destructive one that endeavors to summarily replace the existing systems.
.H1 The future of the handheld enterprise
The handheld marketplace has rapidly matured to reliably support mission critical enterprise solutions.
Specifically, new hardware advances in many areas open up broad ranges of enterprise-level solutions. For example, the Monarch 6015 and Monarch 6017 product lines provide handheld printing options while the Symbol SPT 1500 and SPT 1700 product lines provide enterprise-level barcode scanning solutions. Furthermore, newer devices on the market, such as the Palm VII (with its complementary Palm.net service) and the Symbol SPT 1733/1734 products, support wireless Internet and wireless LAN functionality for the mobile and occasionally connected enterprise. Additionally, continuing advancements, new product lines, and new technology architectures (such as embedded phones, Bluetooth, and other options) will continue to provide a solid foundation for building large scale enterprise systems.
However, advancements are not limited solely to an increase in hardware options, but in new software and complete personal and corporate solutions. A demanding marketplace has driven rapid enhancements in a number of areas such as usability, speed, size, and form. These areas will continue to improve; offering new alternatives as new development takes place. In particular, advances in wireless technology and the Internet growth have allowed handheld devices to take advantage of greater communication abilities. Therefore, the future holds more complete integration between handhelds and traditional corporate infrastructure, as well as the increasingly prevalent use of wireless and Internet-based technologies.
For example, many of my company’s clients have used these hardware options combined with comprehensive software solutions to optimize and facilitate their operations. Field Operator is currently being utilized in natural gas production and compression around the country and internationally and has been responsible for cutting turnaround time on information from eight to 12 weeks to less than 24 hours, with a similarly impressive return on investment figures. Field Operator is pictured in Figure A.
.FIG A Field Operator is being utilized in natural gas production and compression.
Likewise, Survey has assisted other clients in gathering customer satisfaction and quality assurance metrics in a reliable manner previously not possible in such short time frames with so great of ease. By allowing clients to create a customized survey with a standards-based intranet authoring tool, Survey provides the enterprise with an expandable and convenient mechanism to capture feedback in almost any area. In Figure B, you’ll see how a Flexjet, a division of Bombardier Business Jet Solutions, used Survey to track the quality of its service.
.FIG B Survey allows Flexjet to track its service quality.
As demand for customized hardware and software increases, the market will continue evolving to provide smart integrated devices that fit specific niches such as barcode scanning, printing, and more. Many industries and sectors are beginning to realize the advantage of combining handheld devices with wireless technological advances to meet their market needs and enhance existing business infrastructures. The successful enterprises of the future will be those who can leverage and integrate these rapid advancements in technology to drive value creation.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on nHand Solutions, visit http://www.nHandSolutions.com.
For more information on the Monarch 6015 and Monarch 6017, visit http://www.monarch.com.
For more information on the Symbol SPT 1500 and SPT 1700, visit http://www.symbol.com/products/mobile_computers/mobile_palm.html.
For more information on Palm.net, visit http://www.palm.net.
For more information on Flexjet, visit http://www.flexjet.com.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
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.BIO Kevin J. Kelly is Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of nHand Solutions, Inc., at http://www.nhandsolutions.com.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6ee11
