Roundtable: Mobilising workforces
- 17 November, 2009 14:13
- Comments 2
From left: Stuart King Dell | Jamie Warner eNerds | Andrew McLean Intel | Rob Makin Dell | Philip Parker Vodafone | Nadia Cameron ARN | Rob Boogers TLC | David Cannon IDC | Conrad Hilder Anittel | Adam Nixon PCnation | Sean Murphy Nexus
Mobility is a complicated mix of devices, applications, connectivity and support and needs. And it can mean extremely differents things to an SMB, mid-market corporate, blue-collar or white-collar organisation. ARN recently pulled together a panel of industry experts to discuss market trends and opportunities for the channel.
This roundtable was sponsored by Dell.
Nadia Cameron, ARN (NC): How do you interpret mobility today?
Stuart King, Dell (SK): It’s about being mobile, away from the office, and logging on to do your business to be productive anywhere. That could be through the traditional notebook, Wi-Fi networks, 3G networks, VPN access and so on. It could also be more of a streaming desktop, and there are a lot of new technologies from the likes of Citrix and VMware where you stream your desktop session and all your data resides at home base. You run a thin operating system, like a Windows Mobile device or iPhone, and you can access all your resources and be productive wherever you are. There are a lot of supporting technologies that have led that expansion, but the biggest would be broadband, which has enabled a lot of stuff to take place that typically couldn’t, and there is decent enough competition in this country at least to bring price points to a point where it’s not too intrusive.
But mobility could really mean anything – you could be logging on from an Internet terminal. It’s not just about the device anymore, it’s about managing the user and their digital identity so they can be productive from any device. And security is the key, both data and physical.
Conrad Hilder, Anittel (CH): I agree with everything Stuart is saying – it’s when all the technological components including the carriage services come together and allow us to do a whole lot more. But certainly in the SMB place, mobility is now the ability to reach down into what were traditional blue-collar roles. For a long time, BlackBerry, the telcos and so on, allowed us to do the white-collar jobs out and about. But now, people are able to do more of their actual office work remotely. That’s moving right into the traditionally dirty or difficult roles in remote environments, such as delivery trucks. It doesn’t occur to these guys now not to use the intranet, or check their email, while on the road. When it comes to mobility, it really is very broad, but I think in the SMB market place, mobility is just on the horizon now because it’s affordable. It’s only over the last 12 months that the affordability of mobility has been there – only enterprises were previously able to do it.
Rob Boogers, TLC (RB): Mobility is all-encompassing. It’s everything from a fully-fledged notebook or tablet PC, to a handheld. We work all across mobility, but we specialise in the blue-collar space. The difference there is we’re dealing with a lot of people who don’t want to be computerised, and that comes with a whole bunch of challenges. We actually negotiate with unions on why mobility is of benefit, and why having GPS in the device these guys are issued with, or in their vehicles, is not a bad thing – it’s not there to track the fact that they will or won’t be parked in front of the pub instead of wiring someone’s house. That’s from the productivity perspective. The other area we work in is emergency services, where it’s not about cost or ROI, it’s about saving lives.
CH: It’s interested how you and your organisation are working with customers to help them figure our firstly, what’s possible, and also what they need to solve it. One of the things I feel is the big difference between true enterprise, where there are people who can spend time on this, versus mid-market, who want you to tell them what it can do and what the business benefits are.
Adam Nixon, PCnation (AN): It’s also a generational change. People want information coming to them in a variety of ways. As businesses, we need to make sure we’re adopting those different strategies for enterprise or mid-market, and promoting it to our customers. Our space is the mid-market, and we need to keep educating there to ensure customers are getting the most out of technology.
NC: Are you getting lots of questions about achieving mobility?
AN: We do get questions, but I think customers rely on us heavily for promotion and education.
CH: The questions are still more around the business problems, where we’ve then mentioned mobility. They don’t come to you with a question about mobility.
Click here to see the full slideshow and key quotes from the event
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
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Comments
Anonymous
Experts
Unbeliavable, I wonder what the criteria was to select this so called experts very curious.
Specially someone who has only been selling consumables.
I guess it's not what you know but who you know.
Mobility Solutions Service Provider
Roundtable - Mobilising Workforces - A Response
An interesting perspective.
The majority of comments, in a broader context, are what most of us (who deal with mobility solutions every day) are aware of. With all due respect to the participants, who have earned their stripes in their industries, are you at the coal-face? Do you deal with end users and mobility users every day, face-to-face ?
The opening lines from Stuart King summarise mobility quite well. It is not a single application, or a single device, or a single type of data stream. Dealing with companies implementing workforce mobility solutions every day, the mobility context is more about taking the point of transaction to field personnel using a number of resources and tools. It is not one-way traffic and, as highlighted in the article, it is not a single device.
Workforce mobility enables field personnel, no matter what their role, access to information, data, tools and materials that have traditionally been supplied by back-end office staff, supporting paperwork, and a need to rely on manual transactions. The composition of these solutions is dependant on what a workforce mobility solutions provider is adequately able to privide, enhance, and support.
Conrad makes a comment that "In blue collar, you don’t get as much randomness – people tend to have a business problem, such as an x number of trucks on the road". Again, respectfully, dealing daily with blue collar workforces and companies (enterprise level to SME's), you would be surprised at the number of solutions deployed that use 'random' devices, or have different data connectivity needs, or alternating applications dependant on operating systems, etc. A good mobility solutions provider is able to work around these, and other, components of a solution.
BUT, IN SUPPORT of Conrad, there are many SME's that require a simple turnkey solution built around an industry, product, hardware and connectivity, something many wireless application providers haven't picked up or deployed. GPS devices and tracking is probably now considered more of a commodity rather than a solution, with the industry having been educated on proven ROI's. Should a different question had been asked, about how do we change the solution to more of a commodity based product, enabling SME's even faster take up of workforce mobility solutions ?
I strongly agree that mobility solutions are becoming more affordable to SME's, not only in terms of hardware, but also in terms of the software applications and connectivity costs. As JW correctly points out, it IS about freedom. But freedom is across everything and not just devices. The panel is clearly on the right path, but maybe the question should be "Are we educating the market as to what is available?"
In support of this, RB comments that "the rise of the smartphone at C-level is making those people more inclined to support mobility projects because they see the benefits", and I couldn't agree more. Look at the devices, telco infrastructure, interoperability of applications, etc. But at the end of the day, as you point out, it is linked to the ROI. Having said that, for any executive to base a decision on a shininess of a toy, rather than the functionality and support of a tool for their business, is making a decision based on emotion instead of commercial reality. Is this the market we really want to address ?
I concede there are shortcomings with every device we deal with, or every customer or partner we deal with. But, we work in this space everyday, and I believe it is important that the "Big Boys" heed the advice of, and listen to, the "Little Guys" who are dealing with customers in the SME (and enterprise) level workspace everyday.
You might be surprised that what you are seeking in the market, already exists. It's just that you're not aware of it.
Again, I tip my hat to the participants in this exercise, and openly acknowledge you are peers in your industry. But perhaps ARN and the hosts can give some consideration to participants actively dealing daily in the workforce mobility space, and physically deploying solutions to the SME space.
For all that has been said in the above, that is the here and now. In terms of the future, I can openly tell you that, while we Little Guys want to work with the Big Boys, we dont exactly receive a great deal of support in R&D or joint projects. Like you, we also invest quite a bit into R&D for the benefit of industry and end users, but even a simple request of "Can we test our application on your new device?" is almost always met with "Sure, go buy one". Or, if we have an enterprise level solution looking to deploy one of your products, and to enter a pilot, that we get the same answer.
Remember, our solutions are also selling your devices, services or products. Happy to be contacted, just ask ARN for my details. Or if you know my email habits, here's a clue .....
The solutions you are asking for probably already exist ..... all you need to do focus a bit more on education.
A good article all the same, with excellent feedback and observations from participants. Thanks !
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