Article - Wireless PlaysHi,
Here's a short overview of the shift to wireless and some of the players to watch including Edispatch.
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The Wireless Explosion.
by Barton Goldenberg; and Ginger Conlon
Trend Watch
THE WIRELESS EXPLOSION
WITH MORE THAN 30 million outside sales and service people hitting the street every day, the market for wireless products and services is sot to explode. The holdup? Unresolved communication, software, and hardware issues. Even so, many consumer goods, utility, and logistics companies are avid users of wireless technology. For the managers of the thousands of other field forces considering going wireless, here are key issues to watch for:
COMMUNICATION Currently about 200 major metropolitan areas have good wireless coverage. This coverage will improve as wireless application protocol (WAP) is further developed. (Unfortunately, Internet protocol, or IP, is not friendly for wireless; the latency causes up to 40 percent fallout.) In the meantime, field reps outside of these metro areas are often resigned to pagers, because they and their companies are not satisfied with second-rate service. To address the communication issue, some companies are using the depot concept--reps visit a regional office to securely upload and download data.
Key wireless communication vendors to watch: Bell South, American Mobile, eDispatch, and Nettech Systems.
SOFTWARE The main issue here is finding software with functionality that addresses field forces' unique needs and integrates into a company's customer relationship management (CRM) application for closed-loop customer support. Functions to look for include dispatching, real-time inventory checking, and real-time querying and scheduling. Can you dispatch from the customer service desk or do you have to go through a main dispatcher? How does the software handle inventory data and scheduling and the integration of the two? If a salesperson visits a customer that needs inventory and he doesn't have it, he'll look pretty stupid.
Vendors moving into wireless that have experience in CRM: Siebel, Vantive, FirstWave Technologies. New players to watch: Service Plus Corporation, RTS, Matrix, and Field Centrix.
HARDWARE Although there is plenty of effective hardware already in the market--from handhelds to palmtops--new products must be able to read bar codes, which are a staple for inventory management. One company, Symbol Technologies, already has licensed a palm computer that has an integrated bar code reader.
Other key hardware vendors: IBM, Fujitsu, Panasonic.
These issues are real and pressing, but myriad companies are investing significant dollars to resolve them. Once these communication, software, and hardware kinks are worked out, we'll see more and more products and huge growth in the wireless market.
Source: Sales & Marketing Management, Vol. 152 Issue 7, p30
Cheers,
G-News