Smartphones and Tablets Alone Don’t Increase Productivity; They Must Be Paired with Sophisticated Business Applications

It was a 3 day event and what I found interesting is that 99% had iPads. Not any common variety but the latest iPad 2! It is truly a great gadget. I too have one, and I love it.

During my various meetings over the 3 days, I enquired about the views of this product and it's applicability to blue-collar mobility, utilizing a backdrop of ROI to our discussion. A lot of interesting information was acquired throughout these sessions that will obviously make their way into our leading mobility solutions (watch this space).

There was a lot of discussion around the iPad real estate and how this could make the iPad and Tablet Computers, in general, ideal for mobility. We agreed that there are many applications where a Tablet PC would make an ideal solution including White Collar applications, some areas of on the road sales, maybe merchandising, etc. The reasons included:

• Store layouts
• Product Demos
• Virtual Brochures
• Sales Training
• Direct access to reporting from legacy systems
• Etc

However, when the discussion locked-itself into Efficiencies and ROI in Blue Collar applications, it became clear that for reasons such as:

• Portability
• Ruggedness
• Task-specific devices
• Ensuring that time at the screen is productive time
• Long shelf-life (availability of replacements and repairs)
• Etc

Then it was generally agreed that the key selection parameter moved from screen size to rugged, task-specific and truly portable mobility. So, where does that leave the iPhone? In a good place I believe. Already a number of after-market manufacturers are producing sleeves that the iPhone fit into that make it more rugged and adds features such as longer battery life, scanner and card-swipe. Time will tell as not enough of these have made their way into the field and I am aware of initiatives by rugged device manufacturers, preparing products with Windows Mobile and Android to compete in this space.

My keynote titled “Smartphones and Tablets Alone Don't Increase Productivity; They Must Be Paired with Sophisticated Business Applications”, was aimed at driving the point that we should not be bamboozled with the latest gadgets when deciding on a mobility solution; it is tantamount to buying the shiny Mag wheels before you decide on the car to purchase; laughable!

Mobility is a significant ROI opportunity, left untapped or experiencing misguided deployment, within most organisations. AirData is successfully engaging its 30 year mobility experience, expertise and methodologies, working closely with business managers and CIOs to ensure that our consultants define and then our Project Managers deliver leading solutions that meet or exceed ROI, timeline and budget expectations. When defining these solutions, a lot of focus is given to how to efficiently utilise drop-down menus and other methods to make key and context-sensitive information available at your field-workers’ finger tips, rather than having them navigate large and multiple screens. Also key for our engineers is to ensure that your field staff is highly efficient independent of 3g or related Telco coverage.

Having said all that, sometimes the iPad makes sense and this should be the result of a detailed project and deliverables analysis rather than a glossy brochure.