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March 29, 2003 Newsletter.
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We continue to be dazzled and amazed by the pace of technical innovation among the wireless device manufacturers, and by the advances by the network providers in coverage, bandwidth and pricing. As software developers, it's great fun to explore creative ways to extend these incredible technologies.
However, as custom application developers, our work is guided by the immediate needs of our clients and partners, and we are seeing a surprising surge of interest in applications that are not really on the technical "bleeding edge" - an area we call "wireless forms". Essentially, this involves rendering the paper forms used by mobile workforces onto a mobile device.
Just a couple of years ago, company IT directors were judged largely by how well they implemented new strategic technologies, even if there wasn't a clear case for ROI.
Of course, today's business environment is very different. New technology no longer sells itself, and there is relatively little interest in strategic investment in technology. Today's IT directors are tasked with maintaining operations with heavily slashed budgets, and new technologies are interesting to them only if they help them save money.
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As you drive down any highway, you see it filled with people who are on their way to make sales calls, service calls, deliveries or installations, to take surveys, measurements, assessments, or collect some other kind of information. Nearly all of them use some kind of preprinted paper form to collect this information in a structured way, which is then entered into a company database at some later time.
The use of paper forms is a fundamental and ubiquitous business process for enterprises with mobile workforces, but archaic in today's information age, because of:
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- Timeliness (lack of): Information typically doesn't get to the home office until the end of the day, or even the end of the week. The causes delays in acknowledging orders, updating sales and inventory information systems, and invoicing of customers.
- Accuracy (lack of): Information may be entered inaccurately, incompletely, or illegibly, and the task of following through and chasing down information that should have been entered correctly in the first place is wasteful and frustrating.
- Automation (lack of): Paper forms are typically dropped off or faxed in by the person in the field, and then manually typed into a database by someone in the back office.
Some of the larger and more technically advanced field-force companies, like those in the delivery and fleet management business, replaced their paper forms with wireless tablets years ago. However, these devices are generally bulky and expensive, and beyond the reach of most small- to medium-size businesses.
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Mobile data technologies have now advanced to the point that wireless forms are now inexpensive and quickly developed, and make good business sense for most enterprises with a mobile workforce.
On some common handheld devices, screen resolution and navigation features now make it possible to render fairly complex paper forms electronically. In addition, wireless networks have dramatically reduced the recurring costs of using mobile data. Finally, software tools have been developed that can create these end-to-end solutions quickly and inexpensively, in a way that is customized and optimized for each business.
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Compared to a paper form on a clipboard, a handheld device may seem unfamiliar, limiting and complicated to some people, especially non-technophiles.
This is why it's critically important to make the wireless form look and act as familiar and similar as possible to the paper form it replaces. We've often hear that "it needs to look exactly like the paper form we use today"!
What is perhaps less obvious are all the ways that an interactive form can be an improvement over the paper form it replaces:
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 Validation: background logic can verify that entries fall within acceptable values, or simply make sense, for example, to check that a "job completion time" comes after the "job start time".
Calculation: calculations like sales taxes, sums and totals, time onsite, etc. can be easily built into interactive form.
Completion: an interactive form can verify that all required information is entered before the job is closed out or the form is submitted to the home office.
Retention: for convenience, fields that don't change very often (like city or state, or type of customer call) may be left filled in after the "Send" button is hit.
Pre-fills: some parts of a form may be pre-filled automatically, based upon dispatch information, or system information (like time and date).
Navigation: some parts of a form may be relevant only if some other part is filled in. These can be selectively presented to the user only when needed.
Lists: drop-down lists have navigation features like "type-ahead" to help make selections fast and convenient, and are a great way to preserve screen real estate and ensure accuracy.
Datastores: fields on an interactive form can be linked to other datastores on the handheld, like contact lists or parts databases.
Tracking: background timing information can be done, like when an order is completed, sent, received or acknowledged. It's also easy to send the data message to multiple destinations for backup or tracking purposes.
Updates: wireless forms, including lists and datastores, can be designed to be updated in several ways, including cradle synching and over-the air.
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Again, attention to user interface is absolutely essential to the success of a wireless form. Every opportunity needs to be taken to eliminate unnecessary keystrokes and other navigation actions, and to make the form as familiar, while interactive and intuitive, as possible.
Our experiences with with these types of applications has been that potential customers are motivated by the possibility of reducing the cycle time of getting information to and from the field, so that orders can be confirmed and acknowledged, sales and inventory data can be updated, and invoices can be issued, more quickly.
Unfortunately, the value of timeliness isn't always easy to quantify. So how can a case for payback be made?
Given the loaded costs for a company to keep someone in the field, and factoring in the costs of software, airtime and devices, the calculation of cost savings becomes a simple spreadsheet exercise.
In the chart at right, the company assumed that a field force of 25 technicians could be at least 5% more productive, found that payback could be achieved in just a few months, and net cost savings over time add up very quickly.
In other words, a no-brainer case for payback could be made on a conservative assumption of productivity improvement, without even accounting for many of the benefits of timeliness and streamlining the home office.
Also, the network carriers, who are constantly battling churn in their subscriber base, love wireless forms because of their "stickiness". Once a business builds a key business process around a technology, they tend to stick with it and build upon it.
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(For more details on this and other examples, please see previous newsletters).
So what have we got here? A huge, virtually untapped market of field forces using inefficient paper-based processes. Mature technologies that can deliver a real-world wireless alternative inexpensively and quickly, with clear benefits and a strong payback.
So, to repeat the original question, are wireless forms the low-hanging fruit of mobile data? With all of the above benefits, they should spread like crazy now, right?
Maybe a couple of years ago, but now the sales cycle is much longer for virtually all forms of new technology. Again, todays business managers are struggling just to keep the lights on with heavily slashed budgets. Some have been burned in recent years by over-hyped mobile data solutions. Many (unfairly) don't have a very high opinion of their field forces' ability to absorb new technology. And while paper forms aren't very efficient, they are here today, and they work.
The technology is ready, but to really penetrate the market, deployment of wireless forms needs to be most of all easy. Wireless forms will become ubiquitous when the conversion requires very little distraction or disruption in day-to-day operations. Compared to the sale of devices or airtime or content, more hand-holding will be required with requirements gathering, beta testing, backend integration, rollout and revision handling.
Still, visionaries among the network carriers, who are constantly battling churn in their subscriber base, are excited about wireless forms because of their "stickiness", i.e. once an enterprise has built a key business process around a solution, they tend to stick with it. And this can be a great door-opener for other wireless solutions.
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Written by:
Kim Spitznagel
President
Outr.Net, Inc.
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