How Real Is Real Time?

Written by Ed Hess

It's one of the cleanest examples of leveraging real-time connectivity within a field service environment. Your tech wirelessly downloads a day's worth of appointments from your company's backend system into his handheld unit before he leaves the dispatch center. He completes the first appointment and relays pertinent data back to headquarters, which allows the transaction to be completed. Before leaving the customer site, he prints an invoice from his trusty mobile printer.

In that simple business process, the tech uses WiFi, WWAN (wireless wide area network), and Bluetooth connectivity. A rugged unit that operates within all three types of wireless networks handles each of these communication protocols.

WiFi Is Just The First Step
The leap to real time is not as far as some small and midsize enterprises might think. According to a report from the Yankee Group, 49.7% of midsize companies are already using WiFi technology within their enterprises. And for very small companies, the number of companies with WiFi in place is still a respectable 30.9%. In short, small and midsize enterprises currently recognize the value of real-time data access within their campuses, headquarters, and warehouses. Now, it's just a matter of realizing the value of that type of real-time access to data in off-site business processes.

All right, there is also the issue of paying for data transactions over a WWAN. But, the carriers are helping out in that regard, allowing companies to bundle the costs of data and voice charges to arrive at a more palatable price. Additionally, smaller companies can achieve many of the benefits of real time and minimize costs by slightly tweaking the definition of the buzzword. Do you really need up-to-the-second updates from your techs in the field or your drivers? If data was exchanged every 15 to 30 minutes, that might be all the "real time" you need to experience tremendous benefits in managing your resources (i.e. employees, vehicles, inventory) more effectively. In that scenario, you would still be able to reschedule appointments on the fly and complete delivery or service transactions well ahead of the timetable that end-of-day batch processing affords.

The move to Bluetooth is even more logical. Bluetooth connectivity for bar code scanning and mobile printing is now a real option for mobile employees who might need to print bar codes, invoices, or receipts.

Vendors of these technologies realize there are big opportunities in the small to midsize business space. However, these types of companies are rarely interested in implementing technology for technology's sake. Technology decisions in this space will be based on simple questions centered on increasing sales, cutting costs, and gaining competitive advantages.

Wireless and mobile technologies can accomplish all of those prerequisites. Now, vendors just have to get small and midsize business to listen.