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What’s Ahead in Wireless Communications
Sprint’s Latest Wireless
Web Applications for
Business
In September 1999, Sprint PCS
became the first wireless carrier to
offer access to Internet content via
its Sprint PCS Wireless Web. Last
summer, it moved beyond consumer applications, launching its
Wireless Web for Business.
The cornerstone of its wireless
business products is its Sprint PCS
Wireless Web Modem, which fits
into the Type II PCMCIA slot on
most Microsoft Windows-based
laptops. The wireless card, built in
partnership with Sierra Wireless
and BlueKit.com, enables users to
use laptops to access the Internet
wirelessly—without phones or
cables—on the CDMA Sprint PCS
The Sprint PCS
Wireless Web
Modem fits into
the Type II PCMCIA slot on most
Microsoft
Windows-based
laptop computers
wireless network. The network
operates at 56 kilobytes per second and higher.
Insurance companies already
are using the modem card service
for claims adjusters in the field,
who can now fill out their paperwork and submit it wirelessly to
their regional offices for processing. Manufacturing companies use
the same application for their field
sales reps, who can pull up forms
for ordering and check part distribution wirelessly via their laptops.
“The advantage of the Wireless
Web for business is that users
don’t have to find a phone jack to
access the Internet with their laptops,” says Steven Bugg, director
of marketing and sales operations
for Sprint PCS in the New York
metropolitan area. “It allows you
to do from your laptop everything
you would do in your office —
wirelessly.”
Sprint also offers business customers wireless Web private network connections, which give corporate workers out in the field
high-speed Internet access without
having to dial in special codes.
Since last summer, it began offering data throughput at speeds of
up to 56 kilobytes per second,
which is comparable to land-line
dial-up speeds—and considerably
faster than the 14.4 speeds for the
first Wireless Web connections.
Sprint plans to offer its first 3G
product by the end of the year.
Initial speeds for 3G will range up
to 144 kilobytes per second,
which means that phone users will
have enough speed to open up email attachments and read graphic
presentations as well as set up ondemand video and audio streaming, conferencing and digital
imaging. The first phase of Sprint’s
3G deployment, also known as 3G
1x, will double the voice capacity
of the Sprint PCS network.
continued
Microsoft’s “Mobile
Experience” Goes National
Microsoft is midway through a
national, 11-city tour promoting
the explosion of wireless and
mobile technology. The centerpiece of the tour is a 45-foot
mobile theater, which seats 100
attendees. The idea is to show
how corporate workers can configure their e-mail to flow to a cell
phone or a Pocket PC.
The mobile tour will bring
along its own wireless servers to
MICROSOFT
MOBILE
TOUR DATES
Dallas
May 23–27
Atlanta
May 30–June 3
Chicago
June 6–10
Washington, D.C.
June 13–17
Boston
June 19–23
New York
June 26–July 1
set up a GSM and 802.11 wireless
Local Area Network to demonstrate Pocket PC in action. “There
is an element of ‘seeing is believing’ with wireless technology, and
that is why we are doing this,”
explains Derek Brown, product
manager for the mobile device
division at Microsoft. “People
everywhere are talking about
these devices, but when we can
bring people into an environment
where they actually see for themselves how they can send synchronized messages back and forth, it
makes a big impression. A live
demonstration is a lot more powerful than a slide show.”
The first group of presentations
in each city targets C-level executives wanting to understand the
broad strategic advantages of
wireless. Speakers will include top
executives from AT&T Wireless
and Cap Gemini.
A second track of presentations will focus on IT professionals and mid-level decision makers who are responsible for the
implementation and evaluation of
continued
Voice-activated cellular phones. Automatic pilots, not
just in airplanes but in automobiles, too. A single handheld device for wireless e-mail, mobile Web surfing and
digital cellular service. High-speed wireless access with
the same reliability and pricing as wired DSL and cable
modem services. Wireless LAN’s at work, eliminating the
clutter of computer cables and telephone wires.
Pie-in-the-sky dreams, or technological advances that
are just around the corner? Read on to find out what’s
real and what’s important in mobile and wireless innovations that will affect your work and home life in 2001,
2002 and beyond.
2001
Joe at work” or “Call Joe at his work number.” Customers also
can dial by simply reciting the digits of a phone number, as in
“Call 800-480-4727.”
Voice Portals are a wireless technology that enables the conversion of text messages to voice, and vice versa. Wirelessphone subscribers can use voice portal technology to listen to
their e-mail messages. Conversely, digital voice processing can
convert messages read aloud into e-mail messages. BeVocal and
Informio are two leading privately held firms that provide technology for corporations and carriers to operate voice portals.
Device Convergence of cell phones, P.D.A.’s and pagers will
continue. Devices will become more comprehensive, and the
distinction among them more blurry.
The recent Palm-powered Kyocera
cell phone is a perfect example.
With so much interest in wireless data services, Basic Voice
Service has often been overlooked.
Introduction by
No longer. Speaking to another person still remains the mostly widely
Ron Gerber, Chairman/C.E.O. Angelbeat
preferred means of interaction, and
While new, converged devices
behind-the-scenes infrastructure improvements that are ostensiwill enter the marketplace, there are
bly invisible to the user will have a major impact. Carriers are
a number of reasons why Device
making major investments in boosting coverage, constructing
Proliferation will continue:
new signal-relay stations and increasing capacity, all of which
1) Product design tradeoffs: It
should translate into fewer dropped calls and better quality.
is inevitable that an integrated
For example, AT&T Wireless will be using some of the proP.D.A./phone will be bigger than
ceeds from its recent multibillion-dollar global note offering and
a stand-alone product. Some
NTT DoCoMo alliance to “further expand its network, improve
people will always prefer
quality and create an advanced mobile Internet experience.”
handy, dedicated devices that
Verizon Wireless has announced that it will spend more than
are optimized for one task.
$200 million this year in the Washington-Baltimore-Virginia
Others will prefer a larger
region alone to enhance its digital wireless network. This is part
device that can “do everyof the company’s nationwide $4 billion network improvement
thing.”
program for 2001.
2) Always-on communiIn a recent interview, Sprint PCS Chief Technology Officer
cation capabilities: Two-way
Oliver Valente was quick to emphasize that his firm’s “3G” (third
paging and wireless data
generation) capital expenditures for high-speed wireless data
networks provide 24/7 coninfrastructure will have a significant and often overlooked bentinuous access in contrast
efit: doubling the capacity of its existing voice network.
to the circuit-switch–based
At the same time, Voice-Activated Services will become
increasingly ubiquitous. These will be driven both by consumer
networks of carriers. Some devices
demand and by public safety concerns, such as allowing only
will have instant notification of
hands-free dialing while driving in a car. Voice Command from
incoming messages, and others
Sprint PCS, for example, allows customers to dial, find directory
will not.
names, and add and modify address book entries while using
3) Consumer preferences: It is
any Sprint PCS Phone anywhere on its nationwide network.
difficult if not impossible to identiSprint PCS Voice Command recognizes multiple keywords and
fy each individual user’s needs, so
maintains a large vocabulary, including commands like: “Call
there will continue to be a wide
continued
The Sprint PCS Smartphone,
the QCP-6035 by Kyocera,
combines the functionality
of a Palm handheld P.D.A.
with features of a wireless
phone. Customers can use
a stylus to write individual
letters and numbers.
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A wireless modem, shown here with an antenna,
can fit into the Compaq Presario’s 800 PC-card slot.
What’s Ahead in Wireless
Communications continued
range of design options.
Regardless of your selection one
thing is certain, according to Sprint
PCS C.T.O. Valente. Handheld
devices, much like PC’s in the
1990’s, will improve rapidly in features and capabilities.
Longer Battery Life is another
area of improvement. Electricity for
wireless applications is still transmitted the old-fashioned way—
through wires or batteries. All of
the top manufacturers are beefing
up their R&D efforts in this important area, and that will translate
into significant improvements in
customer service and the mobile
user experience.
Take, for instance, lithium (Liion) and lithium polymer batteries,
both of which are experiencing
greater demand. While more expensive than their older counterparts —
nickel metal hydride or nickel cadmium batteries — lithium polymer
batteries can be molded to fit in any
space. They weigh less and expend
less power than Li-ion batteries,
which are harder to mold and fit
into the newer, compact wireless
phones. According to Valente, the
same 3G expenditures that boost
voice capacity should also increase
battery life by more than 50 percent.
While carriers are making significant investments in their telecommunications infrastructure, there
remains, for the foreseeable future,
the inevitable problem of dead
zones. This has created a need for
integrated Off-line/Online Applications, which synchronize information collected on a handheld
device with a corporate database
via a PC-based connection. This
way, if the phone goes dead, the
information is not lost, and can be
retrieved from the database. Among
the leading providers of these integrated applications are Aether
Systems and Pumatech, whose software products ensure data integrity
and consistency across all devices
and applications — including
when calls are dropped.
2002
Integrated Wired/Wireless E-mail
and Unified Messaging. One of the
so-called killer apps for the mobile
worker is wireless e-mail. It is
increasingly important that individuals have integrated and real-time
access to their e-mail and personal
communications from either their
PC or handheld device. Unified
messaging means users can access
all their voice, fax and e-mail messages within a single digital inbox.
Microsoft is well positioned to
be at the leading edge of this development through its soon-to-bereleased Stinger-based cell phones,
PocketPC handheld devices and
PC-based Microsoft Exchange networks, all of which are designed to
work together. (Stinger is Microsoft’s
new software platform for cellular
phones.) With one vendor keeping
track of e-mails on your desktop,
your phone and your P.D.A, you
can expect a consistent interface
across a range of devices.
While there have been and
always will be software utilities to
ensure compatibility across different
vendors, a one-stop solution that
guarantees integrated wired and
wireless messaging will be invaluable to IT managers. One successful
unified approach approved by the
market is Research-in-Motion,
whose BlackBerry handheld unit
has been widely acclaimed for its
seamless integration with both Lotus
Domino and Microsoft Exchange
servers. For example, when you
send or receive e-mail from your
RIM device, your PC-based e-mail
information is automatically updated.
Complementary firms such as
Captaris are currently leveraging
their expertise in unified messaging
applications that tie together fax and
voice-mail services, and will soon
expand their offerings to cover
handheld e-mail.
Location-Based Services have
long been considered one of the
killer consumer apps of the wireless
Web. With location-based services,
merchants will be able to send
advertisements and promotional
messages to a cell phone when
wireless subscribers are driving or
walking by a particular store. These
services will undoubtedly emerge
with time, but given concerns over
both privacy and PC-based banner
advertisements on the Internet,
these mobile advertisements remain
several years in the future.
Consumers may be able to “opt-in”
for promotional messages — or
screen them out entirely.
Telematics, the application of
wireless technologies in the automobile industry, will be one of the
most exciting developments next
year. The availability of maps and
driving instructions in selected
rental cars and high-end luxury cars
is just the beginning. Here it’s useful
to view the car itself as a mobile
device — or even a distinct IP
address. Drivers are mobile users by
default, and represent an ideal audience for specialized offers made in
partnership with automobile manufacturers and wireless services,
including:
• Online maps and directions
• Special promotions at
restaurants and hotels
• Safety features such as
satellite-based door unlocking
and vehicle assistance
Wireless Security. Remember
just a few years ago, when techsavvy thieves were electronically
stealing cellular phone numbers by
standing alongside major highways
with special antennae? This is no
longer a major problem, as the cellular industry responded with
encrypted signals that are difficult if
not impossible for eavesdroppers to
decode while they are being transmitted. Creating a secure and safe
infrastructure for mobile transactions will become even more important as handheld devices become a
widespread means of accessing corporate databases.
Specialized security firms such
as Certicom and DiversiNet, therefore, will play a more significant
role. These firms offer utilities that
prevent access to sensitive information if a P.D.A. is lost or stolen.
“With Certicom security technology, our customers will be able to
use Handspring products to conduct secure e-commerce transactions with confidence,” explains
Joe Sipher, Handspring’s vice president of product marketing.
Improved Display. Displays in
the handheld world are taking
advantage of recent advances in
PC-based display technology.
Much like computer monitors, displays will be sharper (higher pixel
ratios) and in color, and come
with touch-screen capabilities, all
available at lower cost. The real
excitement comes as these display
technologies support multimedia
and video applications. Perhaps the
most recent example of this trend is
the Sony Clié, with a bright color
display and a high-resolution screen
that rivals PC monitors. The Sprint
PCS 5000 Phone by Sanyo, a compact handset featuring the first fullcolor screen on a mobile phone
marketed in the United States, is
now available nationwide. We project that this handset, with its simplified and visually appealing user
interface — plus exciting features
such as “Photo Caller ID”— will
have a major impact in the next 6 to
12 months.
Carrier Billing. We also anticipate a broadening of the role carriers play in the lives of corporate and
consumer users. Taking a lesson
from NTT DoCoMo, which serves
as the primary billing agent for other
firms operating on its iMode platform, carriers will offer an expanded
array of services and the means of
consolidating purchases on cellular
bills to customers. This simplification of the consumer experience
should further drive mobile-, or mcommerce.
2003 AND BEYOND
Integrated SMS Messaging Across
U.S. Carriers. In Europe, one of the
major reasons for the popularity of
SMS, or short message services, is
compatibility across different wireless carrier networks. This is relatively easy, since all carriers operate
on the same GSM standard. In the
United States, many carriers operate
on competing networks and conflicting standards. We anticipate
that U.S.–based carriers will adopt a
method of providing seamless SMS
communications that will benefit all
the carriers, both sender and recipient — or that an enterprising middleware company will provide such
a solution. At the very least, every
handheld device will have a unique
IP address, and will therefore be
capable of receiving standard email messages.
Wireless Corporate LAN’s.
There are a number of exciting technologies emerging that will soon
replace the mass of wires that
extend from desktop-based computers and telephones. Using so-called
WiFi, or 802.11 technology, these
innovations will simplify the lives of
network administrators, cabling
installers and users. The primary
justification for this replacement of
wires will be financial. With WiFi,
there is no need to hire contractors
to replace the wiring to reconfigure
offices or move to a new location.
There also will be significant significant network management benefits for the wired network. The
Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin,
for example, recently implemented
a Cisco AiroNet wireless LAN solution for its clinical information system. The result is quicker, more
convenient access to records and
research data, which has proved
invaluable in situations ranging
from emergency care to daily
patient visitation.
“It's been essential to successfully implementing online order entry
in our intensive care unit,” says Carl
Weigle, critical care specialist and
medical director of information
services.
Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a technology embedded into wireless
devices that enables them to communicate with desktop peripherals,
like printers and fax machines, without cables. The first Bluetooth
devices will begin hitting the market
later this year.
3G/High-Speed Wireless Access.
The recent decision by NTT
DoCoMo to delay its 3G rollout and
trials in Japan is consistent with the
spotty results so far for high-speed
wireless data services in the United
States. Individuals are not willing to
pay a premium for wireless access
at so-called wired speeds — at least
not yet. We project that this will
change over the next two to four
years as network infrastructure
and reliability are greatly improved, along with the inevitable
advancements in handheld device
technology.
According to Sprint PCS Group
Chairman and C.E.O. William T.
Esrey: “Within the next two years,
high-speed 3G data rates promise
to alter the way people traditionally
use wireless services, and will
allow Sprint PCS customers to take
advantage of advanced mobile
applications.” Besides doubling
voice capacity on the PCS nationwide network, Sprint's 3G services
are projected to increase data
speeds tenfold, from 14.4 kbps
(kilobytes per second) to speeds of
up to 144 kbps. Sprint PCS is still
planning the first phase of its 3G
rollout by the end of this year.
One innovative equipment manufacturer may be even earlier to
market. Canada-based COM DEV
Wireless designs and manufactures
high-speed wireless infrastructure
products for top-tier cellular and
personal communications systems
(PCS) vendors. Its offerings will be
ready for commercial deployment
by year-end 2001.
Automatic Pilot Options in
Automobiles. Smart highways, satellite guidance and radio-based traffic
monitors are just now coming on the
market. Sensors embedded in car
bumpers will be able to monitor the
distance to other cars, and be connected to automatic steering systems
to keep cars from swerving off the
road. Sensors in the windshield will
help keep drivers awake.
On-board navigation systems of
the future will be capable of recognizing when a car is delayed in traffic and will use the Internet to make
alternative plans. Ford is working on
a “filtered call-forwarding system,”
which assesses driving conditions
and holds incoming phone calls
until conditions are safe. Meanwhile, Motorola and IBM have
joined forces to create a system that
combines interactive voice recognition with automatic in-vehicle
diagnostics.
This special advertising feature is sponsored by participating advertisers. It was
written and reported by Ron Gerber, the
Angelbeat team and Jason Forsythe, and
did not involve the reporting or editing staff
of The New York Times.
Cover illustration: Hank Osuna
Copyright © 2001 The New York Times
ANGELBEAT INTERNET UNTETHERED
MOBILE INTERNET/WIRELESS CONFERENCES
SM
New York, August 21; Washington, D.C., September 6;
Los Angeles, September 11; Seattle, September 20;
San Francisco, September 27; Toronto, October 10;
Chicago, October 16; Boston, October 18; Dallas, November 1;
Atlanta, November 8; New York, November 29
Angelbeat’s full-day seminars are designed for executives
and IT professionals who are considering mobile solutions to
raise productivity, lower costs and improve service. There are
also complimentary evening sessions for wireless software developers and mobile entrepreneurs raising capital.
Angelbeat also creates training classes for companies
based on their specific business practices and IT infrastructure.
Go to www.angelbeat.com for more information,
or contact C.E.O. Ron Gerber directly at
[email protected] or 212-879-6808.
Microsoft’s Mobile
Experience Goes
National
continued
mobile technologies. There
will also be events in
each city for Pocket PC
consumers, including a
Pocket PC FanFest, where attendees will beam wireless
messages back and forth. When registering on the Web at
microsoft.com/mobile.tour, enter “AB” (for Angelbeat) in
the source-code field for a chance to win a Compaq iPAQ
and to receive free admission to the executive wireless
deployment workshop.
Tour sponsors include Aether Systems, Audible.com,
AvantGo, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Casio and UR There.
As a W-ISP, or Wireless-Internet Service Provider, Aether provides the background infrastructure to enable the synchronization of wireless data through an enterprise. “We are
going on tour to show that anyone can get access to their
enterprise applications in a wireless format using the Pocket
PC, and that they can do it today,” says Curtis Davis, vice
president at Aether Systems. “Our mantra is supporting enterprise applications through wireless data services.”
Aether is currently partnering with TD Waterhouse, the
financial services trading firm, and Compaq Computers to
give away 5,000 Compaq iPAQ’s to TD Waterhouse’s top
stock-trading customers. The traders are using Pocket
Internet Explorer to access the Web and to execute their
trades, and use their wireless browser to access other Pocket
PC sites and send and receive corporate and personal email. “For this application, the important elements are speed
and security,” says Davis. “Our compression technology is
much faster than standard air links—and we will be showing
how users can optimize links to Web sites that we are going
to feature on the tour.”
In addition to e-mail support and Internet access, Aether
will be demonstrating its wireless document management
software, which enables users to print files wirelessly to fax
machines, as well as open .pdf files and e-mail attachments.
It also will be rolling out a wireless customer relationship
management application to allow salespeople to use a
Pocket PC to update and modify order information, access
inventory and check contacts in the corporate database.
“Our objective is to show how much more productive
mobile workers can be with their Pocket PC’s,” says Davis.
—Jason Forsythe
Sprint’s Latest Wireless
Web Applications
for Business continued
Sprint’s 3G venture, announced at the CTIA Wireless
2001 Conference in Las Vegas
in March, is in concert with
Lucent Technologies, Motorola,
Nortel Networks and Qualcomm. In April, Sprint and
Lucent demonstrated their 3G
progress with the fastest 3G call
to date.
Over the past 12 months,
Sprint PCS has entered into several partnership agreements to
expand its Wireless Web for
Business offerings. Last August,
it announced an agreement with
PeopleSoft to make corporate
The Sprint PCS Phone
directories available on Sprint
SPH-I300 by Samsung,
a wireless handset
PCS handsets. A partnership
with the Palm-operatwith Wireless Knowledge allows
ing system and a fullcorporate users to receive their
color-screen, will be
corporate e-mail, contacts and
on the market later
calendar on their handsets, and
this summer.
to respond to e-mails either by
typing messages or choosing from a menu of pre-formatted
and customized responses.
Sprint has also developed an automation tool with
Siebel Systems to allow field reps to place orders and check
inventory. Users can look up appointments and contact
information, and check the last time the customer called the
corporation, all on a Sprint PCS handset. The company’s
arrangement with Sabre allows the user to check on flight
status and modify airline reservations from a wireless handset—without having to go to a ticket agent. Sprint’s agreement with Palm lets their users with smart phones like the
Kyocera QCP-6035 to access Palm portals.
This summer, Sprint PCS will be releasing the Samsung
SPH-1300 handset, which is a full-color phone/P.D.A.
Smart phone running the Palm operating system. The Sanyo
SCP-5000, the first full-color screen (2-inch diameter)
mobile phone to go on sale in the United States, was
released last month. Up to 20 digital color photos can be
downloaded and then synchronized with phone-book
entries, providing on-screen “Photo Caller ID” for selected
—J. F.
incoming calls.
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Mobilizing the Sales Force
BLUE WATER TECHNOLOGIES/
VERIZON WIRELESS
Blue Water Technologies has been installing highend audiovisual and projection systems to boardrooms, conference centers, control rooms and design
centers for the automotive industry since 1985. The
company has been growing rapidly—and that is precisely what worries Donald Beger, vice president of
finance. His job is to keep track of it all. “The concern that I have had is the timeliness of documentation from our field staff,” says Beger. “We have many
road from 85 to 90 percent of the time. “I need to
know when they started, when they ended and what
task they were doing,” says Beger. “We have identified about 20 different task codes, which they keep
handy on a business-card-size piece of paper they
tape to the phone, and they enter it in.”
Besides being relatively painless to the users, it
saves the company both time and money. “We estimate the wireless system has saved us a position and
a half in terms of data entry and tracking down time
sheets. Here we have saved that step by having our
employees enter all their data directly into the cell
phone and into the payroll database. We paid about
$30,000 for software and the database to get this
going—and we are already way above that with
regard to cost savings.”
ALLIANT FOODSERVICE/ VAULTUS
people out in the field that sometimes don’t come
back for months at a time because they are constantly on the road.”
Like most companies that use hourly wage earners who are on the road a lot, Blue Water relied on
employees filling out paper time sheets for payroll
and job costing. Verifying time sheets was difficult
because employees had to look through written notes
to remind themselves of what they had been doing
two weeks prior.
Blue Water kicked off a trial program to replace
paper time sheets with a wireless reporting system
last August. It now has all 50 mobile employees
reporting their hours on their Verizon Wireless
phones through an HDML Web site. The server is
located at Blue Water, and the workers connect
directly to it with their phones. The site prompts them
with certain questions: what their employee number
is, what job they are working on, what time they
started and what time they finished. That information
is uploaded to the Blue Water database, where their
time is recorded. The whole process takes about 15
seconds. Then, within three seconds, they get a
response that says, “O.K., you are done for the day.”
“The key is that all this information is electronic,
and therefore it is immediate,” says Beger. “That
means I can evaluate time spent and the budget on a
job to the minute.”
Most of the employees using the system are on the
Keeping track of anywhere from 30 to 80 accounts is
the challenging task for the sales reps of Alliant
Foodservice, a $6 billion food supplier for hotels,
restaurants and health care institutions. Keeping track
of the 3,000 sales reps who make weekly sales calls,
in person, to their accounts every day is an even
more daunting task—especially considering that the
food has to be fresh, and that time is of the essence.
Though the reps had been taking their laptops
with them on the road, they had no way to report
their orders or check on inventories for the 15,000
different items in the company distribution center
without finding a free phone line. The sales reps use
the laptops to stay up-to-date on pricing for each of
those products, as well as any new brands and packaging information the customer might want to know
as they make their selections. One account might
order 100 items, another 1,000.
Sometimes sales reps
would have to go home just
to find an open land line to
transmit their orders. “In the
old system, a sales rep would
have to ask the customer if
they could use or borrow a
phone line to transmit the
order,” explains Bridget
Warns, vice president, sales
systems development for
Alliant. “At many restaurants,
those phones are tied up with
their own computers, fax and
credit card machines, or just
by receptionists taking reservations. Customers are usually reluctant to allow any sales
reps to use their phone lines.”
Because the orders are
time sensitive and cannot
always wait until the end of the day, a sales rep taking an order in person would often have to guess if
an item was in stock or not. If it later turned out that
the item was actually out of stock, the rep would
have to try to get in touch with the buyer to order a
substitute. If the buyer was unreachable, the sales rep
would place the order anyway. If he or she ordered
the wrong item, it would have to be returned. “The
fact was, you just couldn’t get the job done in a day,”
explains Ron Spears, president and C.E.O. of Vaultus,
Inc., the wireless integrator. “So instead of getting the
orders done in a day, it was taking three to five days.”
Alliant hired Vaultus to equip its sales reps with a
wireless Sierra 300 CDPD Network Interface Card
(NIC) for their laptops. Now they can check inventories and send the orders while they meet with the
buyer. “The ideal situation is: the sales rep goes in to
the customer, takes the order, and within 10 to 15
seconds they get a response back that says, ‘Your
order is completed, here is the total cost, and here are
the items we do not have in stock. The customer can
expect to receive this order tomorrow.’”
In this scenario, if the customer wants to substitute
for the out-of-stock items, they can do it on the spot.
“When the sales rep can do a follow-up order in front
of the customer the first time, they are done with that
customer,” says Warns. “The customer knows what to
expect the next day, and the sales rep can move on
to their next account. They don’t have to run and find
a phone at lunch. And because they are not trying to
track down their customer to get additional information from them at the end of the day, we find that they
have at least an extra hour of selling time.”
Out of the 3,000 sales reps that Alliant currently
employs, 900 now report their sales wirelessly, and
sales have increased 2.5 to 5 percent per salesperson as a result. Alliant also has conducted an internal survey to find out how the new procedure was
perceived by customers and by the sales reps themselves. “Across the board, the customers and the
reps perceive this as a positive,” says Warns.
With an extra hour at the
end of the day, sales reps are
under much less pressure to
finish their work on time.
“Turnover is 25 percent a year
for our industry, and that is a
costly problem. In the end,
we hope that sales will go up
with the extra time reps have
at the end of their day. We
also think that customer satisfaction will increase, and that
not as many reps will leave
their jobs because of stress.”
The Sierra 300 cards have
another advantage. Because
they are not modems, they
register on the network without dialing, and the connection speed is much faster.
“From our point of view, the economics of doing
this are clear and straightforward,” says Vaultus’s
High-Speed Business Links
Many financial institutions are using wireless data services internally to cut costs and improve productivity for their increasingly mobile work
force. Credit Lyonnais has 20 remote branch offices in North America and several more in Central and South America. Until recently, IT support personnel visiting these remote locations needed to use dial-up connections to access the company intranet. The results were spotty at best. Each local
Internet connection required a different protocol, and technicians often had to reconfigure their network connections to be able to get online in different cities. In many cases, the very network they were trying to reconfigure was not working—or was unmanageably slow.
Late last year, the company ordered 16 Ricochet modems from Metricom. The idea was to wirelessly enable
the laptops used on the road by IT personnel, so that they could make service calls to remote branch offices without using the existing network connections they were trying to fix.
One of the advantages of the new external modems, which connect wirelessly to Metricom’s network, is faster
connection speeds. According to Ed Lynch, assistant vice president for IT management and desktop support systems for Crédit Lyonnais in Manhattan, the modems have connected at speeds of up to 430 kbps, which is about
a third of the speed of a T-1 connection. “Generally, the new wireless modems reach the Internet much faster
than what they could get had they logged into their network through a wire,” says Lynch. “The remote offices are
smaller, and they often only have one T-1 line that everyone is sharing. If you have 30 people sharing the same
line, you get one thirtieth of that total speed. Here you get a third of the T-1 speed all the time—guaranteed.”
The newer Ricochet GS units weigh about a quarter of a pound—and take their power from the laptop’s USB
port. “Instead of having to lug around cables, you just carry this little modem with an antenna on it, and boom,
you log on and you are in,” says Lynch.
Each modem costs about $100, and the service costs $39 per month. “The only thing that’s preventing us from
moving forward with more wireless modems at this time is that we are not sure we want to give that kind of wireless access out to regular users who may turn on their Ricochet modem and access confidential files. We are a
The Ricochet GS wireless modem
bank — and the data is very important. But theoretically, we could give it to everyone, even people with deskbrings the wireless Internet to
tops, and they would be very happy. The system is much faster than what most people currently have.”
notebook computers at speeds
There are other mobile modems, but many P.D.A.’s and other mobile wireless modems run at 19.2 or 33.6
exceeding many wired modems.
kbps—which is much slower than 430 kbps. “We’ve found that this solution works very well for mobile workers,” says Lynch. “To be honest, almost nothing impresses me. But this does. It is perfect for mobile workers. It
is extremely fast, and we haven’t been able to find anything like it. The connection is practically instantaneous. Ten seconds, and you’re on.”
RICOCHET AND COMPAQ’S iPAQ
High-speed wireless data is not just for IT technicians. In April, Compaq Computer Corporation announced a suite of new high-speed wireless
data products to go along with their iPAQnet Mobile Internet service. The package enables iPAQnet Mobile Internet customers to use a Ricochet PC
card and Worldcom’s IP network to access the Ricochet wireless data network at 128 kilobytes per second. Compaq also offers Ricochet with its
newest notebook, the Presario 800.
The wireless service is immediately available in 13 U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, New York, Minneapolis, Phoenix, San
Diego, Baltimore, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit and Los Angeles. —J. F.
Spears. “Some clients will equip their laptops, others
will use the new RIM 957. With these devices, corporations can finally bring their mobile workers into
the loop. Sales reps, service reps, and the people who
drive the trucks and work in the warehouse, who
aren’t close to a PC or a land connection, can finally
give data back, as it happens, to the enterprise. In the
end, what wireless technology and mobile applications do is bring the mobile work force tighter into
the supply chain and remove a lot of unnecessary
cycle time by speeding up the information transfer
inside an organization. In the case of Alliant, we were
able to reduce that cycle time from an average of
three days to one hour—and productivity went
through the roof.”
The next deployment for Vaultus: equipping
3,500 mobile workers at Crédit Suisse/First Boston
with RIM 957 devices.
ONE2ONE/PALM
With 8 million subscribers, One2One is the
fourth-largest
mobile
operator in the United
Kingdom. It sells its products in 16,000 retail outlets, 7,000 of which are
high-end, cellular-only
shops. A team of 50 sales
reps is responsible for visiting these 7,000 locations once a month to
check on product displays and point-of-sale
promotions. In all, the
reps ask 120 questions
about the sales procedures in each outlet they
visit.
The effort used to generate enormous amounts of
paper. One2One’s goal became the replacement of
every piece with electronic data collected wirelessly
from a P.D.A.. “We wanted to collect all this data and
change it on the fly when we needed to,” says Ian
Fiske, sales technology manager at One2One.
Last fall, Extended Systems, Inc., of Boise, Idaho,
which was recently acquired by Palm, equipped the
sales force with Windows CE devices. (The system
actually supports several wireless operating systems, including Palm’s operating system.) The reps
use them to send and receive wireless information
every night from their hotel rooms on the road.
Sales reps download presentations and new information about products and their latest pricing from
One2One’s Extended Systems server. The P.D.A.’s
can store 70 HDML pages, enough for five Power
Point presentations.
After a few dropped units and a little cajoling for
the technophobes, most of the reps have come to
appreciate the system, because they no longer have
to tote a suitcase full of paper. “Secondly, when they
get home at the end of the day, they no longer have
any data processing to do,” says Fiske. “They used to
fax the result forms back to the head office—and that
could tack on another two hours to their work day.
Now they hit SEND, leave it for a couple of minutes,
come back, and their day is over. It has really helped
relationships with their families.”
One2One was able to pay for the rollout in two
months with what it saved from no longer having to
print out color hard-copy presentations for each
sales rep. And not having to hire an outside agency
to collate all the paper faxes generated by the old
reporting system provides additional savings.
The next step is to equip the P.D.A.’s with barcode scanner cards so the reps can scan the bar
codes of all the marketing material in the shops. The
marketing department will be notified when displays
are outdated.
Now account managers and sales reps are
becoming technophiles. “The account managers
typically have to have the latest toy,” jokes Fiske.
“No matter what it is, they walk in and say, ‘Can we
hook this up?’ Because the Extend Connect server
handles all the different devices, we don’t care what
kind of P.D.A. they have. We hold the information
they need in the server, and let Extend Connect sort
it out.”
From an IT point of view, the plethora of wireless
devices can signal a lack of information management
and control. Many IT organizations still view P.D.A.’s
as a nuisance and mobile information management
as an oxymoron. “But the more forward-thinking IT
organizations like One2One recognize that P.D.A.’s
are great platforms,” says Steve Simpson, C.E.O. of
Extended Systems. “They are not expensive, they are
convenient, and if you do it right, you can deploy
serious applications on them. But to do that you have
got to have the software and server that allow you to
manage the applications and make sure that the users
are authenticated, and you have to encrypt and
decrypt the information. The latest wireless P.D.A.’s
are the kinds of tools that allow an IT organization to
take these things from being a toy to a very serious
strategic platform.”
—Jason Forsythe