Emerging Mobile Apps

Mobile Store Portals
Companies especially large retailers are developing a new variant of the corporate portal concept. They are setting up store portals, an integrated site for every retail store manager in North America. The store portal is customized to each store. It delivers key performance indicators -- stock outs, customer problems, staffing information -- to the store manager.

These store portals are increasingly being built and optimized for mobile handhelds such as the Pocket PC. Why mobile? Companies traditionally were building corporate portals accessible only through PCs in the offices of retail store managers, where they would be confined to the office to get information. Now the goal is to deliver the information to the point of use.

Consider the case of Office Depot. According to its CEO, Bruce Nelson, its stores are loaded with data. He estimates that Office Depot printed or sent by mail 220 million pieces of paper to 850 stores in North America. The stores either printed them out in their stores or request a printed version from central headquarters. In those 220 million pieces of paper was a lot of data.

In addition to the mailings, Office Depot puts binders in each of its stores -- 100 or so binders that stored all this written data, and successful store managers would have to go through this information, or data, and pull out pieces to try and learn how to run their business better.

To make the process more efficient and deliver the information to user at point of need, Office Depot is building mobile store portals optimized for Pocket PC. We expect to see more demand for Mobile Store Portals in the retail sector especially in "big box" environments like WalMart, K-Mart, Home Depot, Target etc.
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In-Store Customer Service
Typically, handheld cordless bar code scanners have been used extensively at the point of sale to capture UPC checkout information on large, heavy or bulky items, to read bar codes for returns or refunds, as well as in the backroom, for speedy and accurate receiving as merchandise is delivered and accepted.

However, with new wireless LAN developments a host of new in-store scenarios are becoming possible. The IEEE 802.11b wireless network is increasingly serving as an enabler for a host of applications aimed at increasing in-store efficiency and customer service.

Consider BJ's Wholesale Club which is a leading operator of warehouse clubs in the eastern United States, with 131 clubs in the chain. With Symbol PDT 6840 wireless mobile computers, BJ's employees communicate with the store's server via the WLAN to perform in-store tasks such as inventory, put away, cycle counting, price verification and item tracking. Also, there are plans to rollout Symbol's Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) NetVision Phones to talk over the WLAN in real time, optimizing employees' time for tasks and reduce customer service time. Wireless scales, connected to the store's price file via the WLAN, allow further flexibility and improved management of in-store operations.
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Mobile Health Portals
Health-care is one of the most active areas for mobile applications. Different types of portal apps are currently being designed for doctors, nurses, and emergency care workers. The problems that mobile portals for doctors are solving include: legible prescriptions, patient care support apps, e-mail and paging apps.

Patient care support apps include portals for capturing bedside or point-of-care services rendered to various patients. This information then is used to bill insurance companies. Currently the services rendered is recorded on note cards which are eventually submitted to hospital administrators. It is widely estimated that between lost cards and indecipherable handwriting about 10 percent of billable charges often go uncollected. The objective of many new mobile patient care apps is to enable doctors to record the information on their wireless devices (e.g., tablets) and update the back-end systems frequently.

Examples of companies tackling this area include: PatientKeeper and AllScripts.

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Mobile Government
E-business is making government at all levels - county, state and federal - reexamine traditional operations and processes. Government CIOs are working to re-invent the way in which government serves and protects the people. Mobile apps are seen as a tool to streamline and improve the efficiency of government operations.

Take for instance, the administrative side of social work. It is estimated that workers are spending roughly 70 per cent of their time on paperwork and and 30 per cent of their time with the families they are serving. Governments in North America and Europe are actively looking at ways to streamline the data collection process using mobile applications.

Or, consider law enforcement apps that ensures both in-vehicle and out-of-vehicle personnel real-time data access, silent and secure communication and system-wide alarms. With the tap of a stylus on the handheld devices, detectives and patrol officers can wirelessly access the National Crime Information Center, National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System and the Department of Motor Vehicles databases, over a secure network, to check the status of vehicles, persons, articles and guns, without involving dispatch.

Sensing an opportunity, vendors like Aether, Motorola and Compaq are aggressively pursuing a foothold in the mobile government market. Aether through its Cerulean product line makes wireless mobile products for law enforcement and other public safety applications such as fire services and emergency medical systems. Aether plans to extend its product line into other government segments, delivering mobile products that bridge the worlds of wireless and the Web.
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Mobile Claims - Insurance Industry
Claims adjusters need to capture information during inspection. Frequently, they will capture information on paper, and transcribe that information after inspection or at the end of the day. In addition, processing issues requiring action do not receive immediate attention. These problems lead to increased claims processing time and decreased data accuracy. During disaster recovery, these problems multiply exponentially, at a time when the customer needs help the most.

With Mobile Claims solutions, insurance adjusters can capture information during inspection, and submit their estimates immediately for processing. Agents and adjusters in the field can securely access claims status information in real time using mobile devices, and get notified of problems. They can specify other people within the organization to assist or dynamically route the ticket to the people who are available to help. This leads to increased productivity of adjusters, improved customer satisfaction, reduced liability costs, and overall reduced claims costs.
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Mobile Field Service - Distribution Industry
Field service and route accounting are an extension of the enterprise and a market with tremendous growth opportunities. Why? Because, field personnel are manually checking inventory levels, capturing information on paper, and submitting orders at the end of the day or later. They frequently are forced to make multiple, unnecessary trips to the same site, or spend time on the phone tracking down order information.

Symbol Technologies has recently inked a deal, worth between $50-million to $100-million, with United Parcel Service for a next-generation Windows CE handheld, dubbed Driver Information Acquisition Device, for UPS drivers.

Take for instance, Coca-Cola Bottling which recently purchased Symbol handheld computers as part of a solution to provide enhanced service to its retail store customers and repair service to its vending machines. Coca-Cola Bottling field service technicians will use the Symbol PDT 8100 color-screen handheld computer, which uses the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system, to repair and service tens of thousands of vending machines. The PDT 8100, with integrated laser bar code scanning, can receive work orders, inventory and parts information, anywhere on the road via satellite communications to the vehicle cradle system. Additionally, sales managers can use the Symbol PPT 2800 handheld computer, a rugged Pocket PC pen-based device, to take and transmit orders in order to provide faster delivery times and better customer service to its store customers.

With Mobile Vendor Managed Inventory solutions, representatives can use mobile devices to check inventory levels, fulfill orders at the point of customer contact with available-to-promise data, and check existing order status.

It is widely expected that using mobile technology boosts revenues by preventing inventory shortfalls, improves field efficiency, and increases customer satisfaction.
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