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When preparing to present your case for a proposed initiative, mobile or otherwise, you must show the business value. "It's cool" just doesn't cut it, no matter how much we wish it would. For a mobile-computing solution, the savings that result from staff reductions is the most obvious and quantifiable economic benefit, followed closely by an increase in productivity. The savings on the cost of the device versus a PC is offset by the necessary supporting infrastructure and management, but the rapid ROI some companies have seen with mobile work-force deployments makes an easily justifiable business case.

SFA is one of the easiest initiatives to warrant the use of mobile technology, especially in cases where the sales force spends lots of time on the road. In fact, 43 percent of you cited salespeople as the main target of your mobile initiatives. Benefits can include shorter sales cycles, better database accuracy and improved customer service. Order-entry staff levels can be reduced dramatically if there's no requirement to transcribe orders from paper to the system. This also reduces the number of errors introduced as a result of illegible handwriting or human error, providing more accurate information and happier customers.

Another tangible benefit associated with mobile-computing solutions is a higher order-to-fill ratio as a result of accessing real-time inventory information when an order is submitted; this can translate into reduced inventory costs. Early adopters, such as health-care-service company McKesson Corp., cite other advantages, including increased sales, decreased costs, improved customer service, competitive advantage and rapid ROI.

"Automating our supply-chain processes with AvantGo application software and mobile devices dramatically improved our delivery accuracy," said Tom Magill, vice president of logistics technologies at McKesson. "A major benefit of the AvantGo Mobile Delivery solution is its ability to easily integrate with our existing back-office systems using open standards. This accelerated our time to market and had a positive effect on customer satisfaction."

Mobile e-mail access is also an easily justified move since it offers mobile business users access to potentially critical communication with both business associates and customers. Increases in productivity provided by these types of initiatives can be measured easily and viewed as providing a rapid payoff.

Field services -- especially delivery services -- also have seen rapid ROI as well as increases in customer satisfaction thanks to mobile initiatives. Deployments by UPS and Federal Express, for example, have decreased costs by eliminating data entry and offering a higher level of data integrity. Supply-chain systems are made more accurate too by mobile deployments, because inventory levels are automatically adjusted in real time, offering better inventory management and customer service.

Real Time vs. Synchronized

Once you've developed a business case for your mobile initiative, you'll need to dive into implementation details. One of the most important aspects of a mobile initiative is determining whether the application will be real-time or synchronized.

A common misperception in the market is that mobile or wireless computing is equivalent to real-time access. Real-time access is defined as the ability of a device to communicate with a server whenever the user needs to receive or send data. This is the nature of a data-enabled cellular phone used to check the status of a flight, perform a stock trade or access instant messaging.

Synchronization requires only that the mobile device connect occasionally to the network to retrieve and send data. A good example of this type of technology is Lotus Notes, which synchronizes users' local databases with those kept on the central server, letting mobile users keep up to date even though they may be connected to the network only periodically.

To choose the best model for your application, answer the following questions: Do users generally work in an area of widespread coverage? How often does the referenced data change? Does real-time access have definite business value over synchronization? Is guaranteed access to recently synchronized data acceptable?

It may be necessary, after answering these questions, to propose a hybrid approach. In fact, half the respondents to our e-poll say they use a mixed approach, with the other half evenly split between real-time and synchronization models. If real-time access provides business value beyond what synchronization can offer but users often work in areas where coverage is not available, you will need to consider how to meld the two models together to provide the best of both worlds.

PDAs can provide both real-time and synchronized access to data, as can notebooks and other tablet devices. Applications can be developed with this paradigm in mind and can provide access to data dependent on the connectivity option at the time the user needs the data. If the referenced data rarely changes, you'll be more successful implementing a synchronized model, even if coverage is widespread.

Another issue to take into consideration when making a decision on a mobile-deployment model is the current wireless infrastructure. This is particularly important when determining what types of applications can and should be mobilized. Today's wireless infrastructure is a combination of 2G and 2.5G technologies. The 2G portion is circuit-switched and provides a maximum throughput of about 9.6 Kbps, while 2.5G is packet-switched, offering a maximum throughput of just more than 100 Kbps. On the horizon is 3G, which has been hindered by interoperability and spectrum issues but will offer speeds up to 2 Mbps.

Fragmented support for 2G and 2.5G is also an issue, since some areas of the country may offer one but not the other. So consider your application deployments carefully: How large will application data transfers be? Is interaction necessary? Calculate time to transfer the data based on 9.6 Kbps, and you may reconsider your options.

Interaction over 9.6 Kbps may be painful, especially if there are multiple steps that must be performed before receiving the results of a query. Consider speed and throughput when designing new mobile applications and when choosing the deployment model.

Another factor to consider is the protocols and standards used for wireless communications. Most wireless Internet users in Europe and the United States access wireless data via WAP, which addresses issues characteristic of circuit-switched networks, such as latency, and challenges involved in developing data-access applications for cell phones, such as low processing power and limited interface design.

But iMode -- the primary protocol used in Japan on its packet-based network -- relies on HTML. As wireless technology in the United States evolves from circuit-switched to packet-switched, there may be a push to move from WAP to the more ubiquitous transport protocols used on the Internet, which would also allow delivery of data in HTML and other W3C standards, such as XML and xHTML.