Making Mobile Computing Work for you

Mobile computing technology is evolving on daily. Processors are getting faster, wireless bandwidth is increasing, solid state memory is expanding in capacity and getting cheaper, battery life is extending, form factors are getting smaller, multiple radios (bluetooth, wide area, 802.11, gps) are being placed in most mobile devices, and mobile applications are flooding the market. But none of this technology will do you any good unless you know how to apply it.   If you are an operations manager in a warehouse your job is to move and manage inventory. You don’t care that your MC9090G has an Intel® XScale™ Bulverde PXA270 624 MHz processor. What you care about is how it’s going to help you move boxes faster. With the right mobile computing solution, of which the MC9090 is a piece, you can greatly increase the visibility and velocity of inventory in your warehouse.

Mobile computing can be adapted to almost any industry. The applications of mobile computing are limitless and should be developed around the fundamental core of your business. If you are a lawyer your mobile device should give you access to your client’s record from outside your office, it should allow you to check email, it should give you the ability to log your hours as you work, speeding up your billing cycle, it should replace your cell phone, and it should help you to quickly reference cases and databases relevant to your current clients needs, among other things. Bottom line: your technology purchases should be for the sake of improving your core business processes and not for the sake of technology in and of it self. Many of these business applications can be enabled on today’s consumer devices like black berries and other smartphones running windows mobile or the new android OS.

Consumer devices however are just not built for work environments. On average a consumer grade Smartphone needs to be replaced once a year when used in a work environment.  To ensure that you get the most out of your technology investment your work devices should be “rugged.”  Truly rugged mobile computers last on average for 2-5 yrs in a harsh work environment.  In addition to preventing replacement costs, rugged mobiles also reduce the costs of down time during device repair or replacement, as well as the costs of increased IT support to reset up your 2nd and 3rd smartphones to the way you liked your first. In addition to ruggedness the other critical characteristic smartphones are missing, which is integrated into most of these rugged mobile computes, is Automated Data Collection.

With Automated data collection (bar coding, RFID, and image capturing) the input of business critical information is made much faster and more accurate. The averaged skilled typist makes 1 error for every 300 key strokes.  In an e-commerce environment these errors cost $75 on average: if a product is shipped to the wrong person or the wrong product is shipped, the retailer will have to pay for return shipping and to reship the right product, have to pay for help desk operators in call centers to support the now unsatisfied customers, and the overall customer experience is diminished reducing the likely hood of repeat business.

To adopt the current hardware to your business processes requires software.  Without the appropriate software your mobile computer isn’t much more than a really fancy paper weight. Mobile computing enhances a business by automating repetitive processes, increasing information availability and flow, and by allowing migration to a paperless system which means less back office administrative work, a greener enterprise, and reduced operating costs, as well as increased worker productivity.  To realize these returns on your technology investment you need software that matches your business processes, which is easy to use, and which runs on your hardware.

So who can help you to match today’s best of breed hardware and software with your business needs? The industry term is a VAR (value added reseller) or a systems integrator. These companies partner with hardware manufactures, software developers (or often have their own software teams), and provide value added services to integrate the current technology with your business needs. With high profile customers like Kroger, The Sports Authority, MillerCoors, American Airlines, and Samsonite, Accucode has the skills and expertise to provide you with that integration. Give us a call today to learn about how mobile computing can improve your business.

Chris Barr
303 639 6111 x120
cbarr@accucode.com