Volume 1, Issue 6 / 2008

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Lost? Follow the Mobile Money

Some say the economy is heading toward a recession, but the mobile technology industry and its complimentary social network industries are apparently heading in a different direction. Rutberg and Company recently reported that a billion dollars in venture capital flooded private wireless companies in the last three months alone. These investments are not insignificant as companies like Zannel snared $10MM, Kyte grabbed $21MM and Pelago closed on $15MM.

A recent KPMG study indicates that this trend will continue for at least two years, with 31 percent of the digital content investment funds chasing mobile application companies. New funds and initiatives sponsored by the $100MM iFund and the RIM/Reuters $150MM fund are already adding fuel to the industry.

As we have noted earlier in this column, everything is ‘going mobile’. Higher capacity wireless data networks and incredible handheld technology are throttling the growth of applications that connect us with the office, home and our social networks. Anyware has created an expansive set of tools and skills which are needed to capture the promise of mobile technology benefits in a business process or when building a mobile product. With the investment volume we are seeing, there promises to be more disruption and innovation. In our twelve years of operating history, we have served our customers well by anticipating the future and protecting the investment of those customers.

If you are aware of an application or website that needs to ‘go mobile’ and follow the money, please contact me at clint.parr@goanyware.com.

Sincerely - Clint Parr
 

Ever get sick at a convenient time? Yeah me too…and I’ve also got ocean-front property in Kansas for sale!  Are you interested?

Going to the doctor today for your everyday cold or sinus infection (or insert your reoccurring ailment) is not really at the top of the list for most people. There is the taking time off of work, the 30 minutes you wait in the waiting room after your scheduled appointment time comes and goes, then the additional 30 minutes you wait to see the doctor in the examining room after the nurse runs her vitals…(Vitals? C’mon nurse I’ve got a cold, I’m pretty sure my heart is okay!) All this for a 5 to 10 minute exam from the doctor so he can say “Yep, you’ve got a sinus infection; here is a prescription for Amoxicillin.”

Today this picture is changing as new Doctor/Patient portals are beginning to be used. These portals are a way for everyday folks who get sick from time to time to access their doctor from their PC through the Internet. From the portal they can perform several tasks, such as refilling a prescription, asking for an online consultation and even scheduling an appointment. Now for the necessary caveat…if you’re bleeding profusely, you can’t breathe or you're having chest pains…obviously, these portals not for you – 911 is! But if you know how to spot a cold coming or have been to your doctor before for a reoccurring diagnosis, you can access him through the portal and get instant prescription refills or immediate access to a nurse.

So why mobilize a portal like this you say? Because getting sick is never convenient – sometimes we are at home when it hits and sometimes we are traveling. Finding a pharmacist or visiting a doctor in a strange city is even more inconvenient than being sick at home. With a mobile portal, you can schedule appointments and request refills on prescription medicine...all from your mobile phone. So the next time you’re sitting in the airport waiting for your plane to board and you start to feel like you’re getting sick, flip open your phone, put in a request for a prescription refill of Amoxicillin, enter your destination, get on the plane and pick it up when you arrive…then, get to feeling better!

Our sales guy gets a call from a local oilfield services company. They’re having problems tracking their high value assets while in the field and they want to know if we can help. After a few questions we know we can help and let them know that. The next thing out of their mouth is “Great! How are you going to do it and how much will it cost?”. The problem is, those are not always easy questions to answer.  Fortunately, we have a great way to tackle the problem – one that we’ve used for years.  It helps us ensure that we understand all the issues facing our customers as well as address the things that we know from experience can hinder the success of a technology deployment. 

The Anyware team responsible for building and deploying mobile solutions lives and breathes the Anyware Solution Delivery Methodology. Whether we’re building custom solutions or deploying mobile products, we always focus on the same key steps: Definition, Design and Delivery. We’ve successfully used this methodology for years and see it as key to our past and future success. It also happens to be something that differentiates us from our competitors (many short-cut or even skip various phases). By using a repeatable method to deliver our solutions we can always be assured that we’re working as efficiently as possible to meet our customer’s requirements while also ensuring that we’ve considered all the necessary things that our customers might not always be aware of themselves.

For customers that have never been through a project with us it’s sometimes difficult to explain the value of this process. One analogy that always seems to bring it home for our customers is the process of building a new home. Here’s how the analogy works:

Lets imagine your kids have (finally) moved out of the house and you’re ready to downsize. You’ve decided to build the house you’ve always wanted and you’re ready to talk to an architect and get started:

Definition – Meet with your architect
Your architect asks you lots of questions about what you want out of your new home: one story or two, how many bedrooms and bathrooms, open plan or not, will you be entertaining or not, any special needs, etc? Based on your responses he’ll create some sketches and get you to sign off on the overall floor plan and key features.

Design – Create a set of blueprints
After the architect gets your approval on the initial concept he then begins creating the blueprints. At this point he gets down to the details: what size and type of windows, what type of countertops, where are the electrical outlets, where are the surround sound speakers going, and so on? From the blueprints, you will know exactly what you’re going to get and because the builder knows exactly what needs to be delivered, you can now get a quote on how much it’s going to cost.

Delivery – The house is constructed
Construction starts. Now you get to start walking through the actual house, picking out colors and seeing how everything actually flows. At this point, you might want to change something, but if you do you also know it’ll require extra work which might affect the overall cost and your move-in date.

In the end you are living in your wonderful new home that meets all of your needs and you were involved every step of the way. You weren’t surprised with cost over-runs because you knew what your requested changes were going to do to the budget and timeline before anyone decided to move forward with the changes.

Can you see the parallels yet? When we deliver mobile solutions, it works exactly the same way, but with the following slant:

Definition – Understanding business requirements
We want to understand your business requirements up front. What issues are we trying to resolve, what business processes and existing technologies are involved, what issues do the ultimate end users have and how will we be able to deploy and support the solution moving forward? Once we understand these issues/requirements we create a conceptual design of the solution along with an expected return on investment.

Design – Creating a detailed technical design document
We want to make sure our customers know what they’re going to get when the solution is complete. What will it look like, what systems will it work with, what types of devices will the end users be most effective with, what will the reports look like, etc? Once the design is complete, we know how much delivery will cost and our customer knows exactly what to expect. This ensures that we and our customers are always on the same page!

Delivery – Developing, testing and deploying the solution
Now we do the grunt work. We do our development, quality assurance, training and deployment of the solution. Our customers are involved in testing and know that everything works the way they expected it to (according to the design) prior to the solution going into production. If, during this phase, our customers decide to add something to the design we work together to ensure that the result of the change (on cost or timeline) is understood before moving forward.

Using this methodology, there is no buyer’s remorse. We have a happy customer with a solution that meets their exact needs and expectations.

At the end of the day, when we build a solution we always work closely with our customers to ensure that we deliver a solution that meets all of their needs, has no unexpected surprises and delivers a solution through an experience that is highly satisfying.

Give us a call if you’re ready to build a new home!

The average traveler is not aware of the processes involved in providing clean and fueled rental cars at airports. Rental vehicles are constantly cycled through various processes to “ready” them for customers. Most airport rental lots don’t have the space to store their entire fleet of vehicles which requires them to shuttle vehicles to and from reserve lots throughout the day. Entire inventories at car rental lots can turnover several times in one day. Shuttling vehicles that cost $20,000 each on a daily basis can present a number of inventory control challenges. By utilizing new mobile software and handheld devices, car rental companies can meet these challenges head on and deter the theft of vehicles, track vehicle transfers, and eliminate cumbersome paper processes.

A recent installation of Anyware’s ReFormXT™ by a leading car rental company has produced strong results in theft deterrence. By utilizing scanning technology to link guards, drivers, and vehicles together, the company was able to more closely monitor vehicle transfers and deter potential theft. The real-time aspect of mobile technology has enabled almost instantaneous tracking of missing vehicles and the parties responsible for them. In fact, email notifications can be sent to management based upon the amount of time a vehicle has been “missing”. This is a dramatic improvement over past processes that did not alert management until a vehicle had been missing for hours or days.

Vehicle transfers can be critical especially on busy rental days. Depending on the airport, vehicle transfers can range from 6 to 15 minutes. Driver costs, fuel costs, and customer experience are business elements that demand efficiency by car rental companies. By using mobile technology to track transfers, the rental car company has been able to capture important data that enables them to analyze shuttle times and set benchmarks for future driver performance. This data also enables the rental company to optimize shuttle routes to improve fuel efficiency by logging transfer locations and transfer times to the minute.

Car rental companies have utilized scanning technology for many years. However, this technology is not always used due to the lack of Wi-Fi coverage at some rental or storage lots. Anyware’s shuttle control application utilizes both Wi-Fi and cellular technology which enables scanners to be used in locations where Wi-Fi is not available, meaning paper processes would have been required.  The information is now available over reliable networks in real-time.

New asset tracking technology has brought many improvements to rental car shuttling activities. Companies are realizing the benefits of on-line, real-time reporting of vehicle transfers. The results of companies using ReForm XT are transparent to the end customer; the rental experience provides them what they expect, when and where they need it. The value to the rental car company is a cost effective solution to provide management the information they need, when they need it in order to make effective decisions regarding the management of high value assets and personnel. In the end, we are helping provide what the customer needs, when the customer needs it, at a cost that provides real value from Anyware Mobile Solutions.

Just a year after Apple released the first iPhone™, the long-awaited, next-generation iPhone 3G arrived and it is also making quite a splash. I’m sure you heard about it – it’s all over the news!  Hoards of fans clamoring outside retail stores to buy the new phone, analysts and bloggers alike salivating all over their keyboards to hammer out glowing reviews, and sending other handset manufacturers to the drawing board to create the next “iPhone killer”. There is no doubt that Apple has created a very impressive, and industry changing, consumer device...but is it “smart” enough to gain hold in the corporate arena?

When the first iPhone was released, the masses marveled at its beauty and ease of use. It was like nothing any of us had ever seen. From its stunning display, sleek design, intuitive multi-touch interface and accelerometer, people just couldn’t get enough of it! But soon after its release the complaints starting coming in: It’s too slow, AT&T is the only carrier, there’s no keyboard, call quality is poor, there is limited support for applications and so on. But it wasn’t enough to stop a dizzying run on the phones, as over 6 million have been sold.

The iPhone 3G promised to fix most of the issues that plagued the older version. Apple also added new features it says will attract and retain the millions of corporate users. So, how did they do? The new phone did correct most of those previous issues, plus they added several more features, moving it closer to the capabilities of your standard smartphone. Most significantly, Apple added access to AT&T’s considerably faster “3G” network so web surfing is much faster and the voice quality has significantly improved. The multimedia capabilities, at least in terms of viewing videos and websites, are undoubtedly one of its greatest strengths.

As for attracting business users, Apple added support for Microsoft Exchange so you can sync your phone with the ubiquitous corporate email system. While there are many more new “bells and whistles”, it’s not quite ready to be “officially” adopted by the corporate world. For instance, many corporations demand high levels of security in the tools they support. The iPhone 3G doesn’t have native encryption, device management or end-user policy settings. In addition, any program that you download to the phone must come from Apple’s new online AppStore – unacceptable for mission critical and/or proprietary applications.

For the typical (non-enterprise) business user, iPhone 3G still lacks many features that are considered standard on smartphones. For instance, there’s no support for removable “flash memory” storage cards, voice calling, video recording, and most surprising, you can’t cut and paste text. That hasn’t stopped “business people” from buying the phone, but since Apple has so severely locked down the ability to load applications, justifying the iPhone 3G for business process use is going to be difficult.

In other words, what’s really going to dictate iPhone’s success with the business user are the applications that provide value and improve productivity. Hundreds of new applications have already been written for the iPhone with thousands more in the works. But a quick look at the AppStore shows only 14 applications classified as “Business”. A closer look reveals that out of the 14, several are ‘expense tracking’ apps, one eBay monitoring app, a handful of ‘timesheet’ apps, and an ‘idea sketching’ tool. Only a couple of products, such as the Salesforce.com mobile client, would be considered true value-add business applications. As the weeks and months go by, more business applications will certainly be made available. Just make sure to keep your credit card information on iTunes current, because that’s the only way to find and purchase applications for your iPhone.

Apple’s iPhone has changed the mobile landscape for good…and for the better. Their ground-breaking innovations have become a major influence on mobile device design. Full touch screen devices have become the latest trend in the market and have proven lucrative for more established smartphone manufacturers. Combining these innovations with the abilities and features of a business-level smartphone could result in some really cool devices. Of course, you thought typing an email on your BlackBerry or Treo was rough…wait until you try it without a keyboard!

Anyware University Coming Soon
Designed to provide a unique review of emerging mobile computing applications and technologies, Anyware University educates business leaders on mobility and how it can improve their business processes while providing a high rate of return. Details on upcoming events will be coming soon.