Mobile CRM Arrives

Mail systems equipment company Pitney Bowes Inc. is set to roll out a Europe-wide mobile customer relationship management (CRM) system to 900 field-engineers equipped with Windows PocketPC devices.

Instead of taking hand-written notes and phoning in job details, or dropping off hard-copy forms at the office for clerks to manually enter into the company’s proprietary database, engineers can now file live reports and retrieve updates on callouts directly to their wireless handheld devices. The result is a much lower-cost, more efficient operation, with more responsive customer services, says Ray Lawes, vice president of service operations at Pitney Bowes UK.

“You’ve automated a large administrative process,” says Lawes. “It’s got a payback time of less than a year.”

There are also “soft benefits” that wouldn’t, themselves, justify the deployment. These include engineers being able to do things like call customers directly to make appointments for on-site visits as soon as jobs are logged on the system and, further down the road, reducing the company's spare-parts inventory.

Pitney Bowes began the rollout in February 2006, following a successful implementation by its parent company in the U.S. that now supports almost 2,000 users. For now, the European deployment supports around 400 users in the U.K., Austria, Germany, and Switzerland but will ramp to 900 users over the next 18 months, as France and Scandinavia come online.

Being able to draw on the experience of Pitney’s U.S. parent has helped smooth the deployment, and the system may actually perform better in Europe thanks to better mobile network coverage. The biggest challenge was getting internal systems and processes into line. “We’re actually better organized now,” says Lawes.

“We now have a common service information system across Europe, whereas before we had local systems [in each country]... It’s gone better than expected."

The mobility platform and systems integration was handled by specialist enterprise wireless applications company Antenna Software Inc. , which ports to the Siebel CRM system and reformats it for use over mobile networks to devices running the Antenna client software.

Without the need to send and receive large amounts of data, the system runs over standard General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) mobile networks. In the U.K., Pitney Bowes uses O2 plc as its wireless carrier, but each country can negotiate this separately, as the application is network-agnostic. Lawes does not anticipate an increase in telecom costs, since field engineers are making fewer and shorter mobile calls. “It washes out about the same so far,” he says.

— Gabriel Brown, Chief Analyst,

Wi-Fi City, Anaheim CA, USA
The city of magic, Anaheim, CA, which houses Disneyland, is soon to be
turned into a completely wireless city. The CEO of Earthlink, Charles
Betty, is the one responsible for installing little boxes to more than
1,500 traffic lights across the city, which emit a Wi-Fi connection
throughout a large radius.

At the end of June, Betty will cut a ceremonial wire, which will
activate all of the boxes throughout the city. Residents will then be
able to pay $22 a month to tap in to the city-wide connection.

Anaheim is not his only target. He also has already secured contracts
with Philly and New Orleans for the same kind of infrastructure, and
he is eyeing Honolulu, Minneapolis, Arlington, Va. and, with help from
Google, San Francisco, as well. If the Anaheim project works out well,
expect other cities to be getting in on the action too.

More:
http://www.i4u.com/article5942.html

LMA User's Group Meeting
Mood:  sharp

I had the pleasure of attending a Conference yesterday where a group of individuals spoke of what LMA, LMS, LMC and Hot Lava had affored them the opportunties to do. 

I learned about ‘Chunking content into appropriate Nuggest for m-Learning.’ I found out there is a Mobile Content Developer Certification program in the works out of Singapore, that was very much interesting. 

Listened to a sharp gentleman from Mem-Cards Corporation was there speaking on that product and how it was using LMA and Mobile Learning to get their product out to people.  You can visit www.mem-cards.com and click on ’suggested uses for Mem-cards’ under ‘corporate programs’ to see what is available.  We were given a sample of a set of cards they did for Club Med, using CM’s color scheme.  What a great personal coaching tool these little cards are.

Heard a gentleman spoke about ‘Using LMA in solutions on higher education & capturing feedback.’  Speaking in relation to the University level and how these students were using their Razor phones, or even Ipods to help with their continued education.

And a very fascinating individual from Naois spoke about IMELS (Integrated Education and Learning System) enabling the disabled access, via mobile technology, the educational content they might need to become more independent. Did you know that 6.4M students are in some way utilizing some form of Assistive technology?  These individuals have physical, cognitive, and speech disabilities. 

60% of disabled students never use a computer, verses 25% of non-disabled students.  9:1 student have computers in urban areas.  Less than 10% of disabled students have internet access (38%).   

Also, the potential for this technology to be used in the Restaurant world to train new employees, or retrain old employees.  It’s not just the Restaurant world, what of the Service area, HVAC service Techs, or even Auto mechanics.  Tracking of inventory, performance evaluations, etc.

This is some pretty amazing stuff.

Learning Mobile Content Discussion
There is a new Discussion board dedicated to Learning Mobile Content. However, any variation there of can be a topic. Learning Mobile Authoring, delivery & tracking solutions using LMAs. Anything you wish to discuss, learning, or share is welcome.
Learing Mobile Content Discussion

Are you ready for Mobile Learning?
Are you an educator and find it difficult to believe an instructor lead course could possibly be taught souly using mobile devices?

Are you not willing to consider that it would free up your time for bigger and better opportunities? That is would free up your students time to allow them to persue other avenues of continued education? All at the same time still provide the same results that an instructor lead course would?

Why are you so unwilling to let go? Can you not imagine your time being spend doing something else rather than standing in front of a class? Let me here from you. Tell me what you are thinking?