VideoWhen Bill Tara, CIO of American Medical Response Inc., the country's largest private medical-transportation company, needed help rolling out mobile enterprise applications to his company's 18,000 employees, no one answered his 911 call. None of the company's systems integrators, wireless carriers, device manufacturers, or application vendors had all the technology pieces he needed to complete a complex network that would link ambulances and dispatchers with hospitals and the medical histories of the 4.5 million patients the company serves.
"There is a vast amount of information we need to know at any given time about our ambulances — where they are, where they are going, who is in them, the medical history of the people they are carrying, and the quickest way from point A to point B during rush hour in New York City," says Tara. "And then we need to electronically transfer some of this information when we get to the hospital. The challenge we faced was how to provide leading-edge patient care in an ambulance. We basically needed a mobile emergency department."
True, most companies don't have to worry about how a bevy of computing and wireless devices that rely on different communications protocols will fare when piled into a motor vehicle beset by electromagnetic interference and a wailing siren. But many executives can empathize with Tara when he notes that "the mobile-computing world is really absent that point person who can tie it all together for you." Carriers, he says, can supply bandwidth, hardware, and even security, but they lack a universal footprint. Consulting firms understand the business issues but don't have a solid grasp of mobile technology. Hardware and software companies tout "wireless solutions," as do systems integrators and even outsourcers. But to date, no entity has emerged as the partner of choice, able to offer one-stop shopping for all things mobile. As Tara says, "It's like the six blind men and the elephant out there."
Dave Sobb, vice president for logistics at office-and computer-products company Corporate Express, agrees. Three years ago, when the company decided to provide its 1,500 delivery drivers with mobile devices to manage routes and capture electronic customer signatures, it had to ink deals with two companies: one for network services, and one for handheld devices and software. If the company were to do the same today, he says, it would need a similar approach. "There is certainly an opportunity in this area," notes Sobb. "I have not yet seen anybody step forward to do it. We still look to multiple partners to get what we need."
Waiting for a White Knight
Three years ago, many companies felt that they needed time to assess their wireless options, and they assumed that when they were ready to do anything major a white knight would have arrived. That hasn't happened, and now companies are feeling pressure as increasingly mobile employees clamor for remote access to data, and anecdotal evidence suggests that mobile computing enhances overall productivity.
According to a Forrester Research study, many companies are now employing mobile-data applications much faster than they initially anticipated. Almost 50 percent of the 1,000 companies surveyed by Forrester say they have already rolled out such applications, ranging in complexity from wireless E-mail to complex data-collection and -management projects, and that such deployments were done 18 percent faster than planned. These companies expect mobile applications to be used, on average, by 23 percent of their workforce. And 30 percent of the respondents say they plan to eventually provide mobile access to critical enterprise data. The survey participants also say that they expect about 19 percent of all voice traffic to be switched over to mobile services by the end of this year.
Wireless, in fact, is quickly expanding beyond its initial status as a sexy new technology tailored for that subset of employees most likely to be on the road. In January, Ford Motor Co. cut the cord on 8,000 landline phones in its product-development area and converted to wireless phones from Sprint. Ford engineers now wander the company's campus and chat with one another using the walkie-talkie function and make wireless calls to other co-workers. Capital One Financial Corp. is going further in the process of moving 1,500 employees to a totally mobile computing environment, complete with Wi-Fi laptops, VoIP phones, and wireless printers, as part of its "Future of Work" program.
But for every large company that has a plan for enterprise mobility, there are 10 others that don't know how to even begin assessing what they have, let alone move forward on other projects. Increasingly, these companies are looking for a hand to sort through their mobility mess, cut costs, eliminate redundancies, negotiate better deals with vendors, and then start thinking about more-strategic uses of mobile technology and mobile applications.
Even large organizations that are used to handling their own technology needs are increasingly turning to outside help when it comes to mobility, because of the technology's complexity and its legal and regulatory ramifications, says Ellen Daley, a principal analyst at Forrester. "It's because of the risk of information disseminated on these mobile devices," she says. "Many CIOs are concerned about Sarbanes-Oxley, especially in financial services. In the health-care industry, they are concerned about HIPAA. They need mobile access to be secure, and they can outsource that risk. It can't be a completely internal job; they may decide to go outside at some point."
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