Mobile Technology Brings Power to Employees on the Go

Published: 24 January 2006

Mobile technology is transforming the way we work. Sales and service people have been using wireless connections for decades but, today, handheld devices are starting to help them perform their jobs much more effectively. This article looks at how mobile technology is changing business performance along the supply chain.

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Some of the mobility features described on this page are currently in testing with select customers and will be available soon in upcoming versions of Microsoft Dynamics AX.

To an average person like me, it felt like it happened all at once. One day a waiter in a restaurant took my order on a mobile device. Then the postman had me sign for a package on a screen he held in one hand. Next it was the taxi driver with a portable electronic credit-card machine. But, in reality, mobile technology has been around for a long time, and has been used by workers across the supply chain. Yet now the experts agree that something really seems to be up.

The Day Wireless Technology Grew Up

Technology pundits say that mobile hardware is maturing and mobile technology rapidly improving. "Both devices and network technologies have improved by leaps and bounds in the past year or so," writes Tom Wailgum on CIO.com (The ABCs of Wireless).

There is greater processing capacity, longer battery life, lower prices and more stable network coverage. Software for mobile applications has also become more stable, but Wailgum points out that software is not yet fully mature. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2004/jan04/01-26SupplyChain.mspx

"There is still work to be done on the application side, but many vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP are building wireless functionality into new versions of their software."

Everyone's Talking Mobile

If mobile technology is going places, then it is Scandinavia, and in particular Denmark, that is leading the way with new and improved tools. According to Esben Wolf of the Danish Technological Institute, the Danish community functions as a kind of test base for mobile consumers and businesses.

"We have very strong research facilities and scientists in this country. And also, Danes just seem to love to break new ground," Wolf says. There are, in fact, more handheld devices sold in Denmark per person than in any other country in Europe (Børsen magazine, Oct 18, 2005).

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Microsoft chose a Danish-based company to pilot their latest mobile project. After all, Microsoft's largest development centre outside the United States is already in Denmark.

"The Nordic region is the place in the world with the earliest adopters of new technology in general, and they're farthest ahead in mobile technology in particular," says Bjarne Schøn, who heads the mobile business systems project for Microsoft. "Add to that the fact that we have a lot of enterprise resource planning (ERP) knowledge at our Microsoft development centre here in Denmark, and you can see why we're running this project here."

How Do You Make 10,000 Tons of Crisps Move Faster?

The project that Schøn refers to is a mobile solution for KiMs, a Danish snack manufacturer that ships more than 10,000 tons of snacks a year. KiMs uses Microsoft Dynamics AX, which is now part of the Microsoft Dynamics family of products, to run their business.

KiMs had already worked with Microsoft to pilot several new supply chain technologies linked to the Microsoft Dynamics AX system, including Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), demand planning and event management.

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Now they've teamed up once again with Microsoft and local handheld technology expert Handsteps to update their mobile technology with a pilot solution called Mobile Sales Assistant. (Visit Handsteps' website.) KiMs had a mobile solution to begin with, however Jesper Toubol technology manager at KiMs, likened that solution to "an advanced form of pen and paper"

Salespeople Step Closer to Customers

The Mobile Sales Assistant enables salespeople to synchronise their handheld devices with Microsoft Dynamics AX wherever and whenever they want. In addition, they have access to a number of ERP functions. For example, whenever they need to, salespeople can access information such as:

•	Their own route plans, email and calendar
•	Customer information and sales history
•	Point-of-sale (POS) data for each customer
•	Product and inventory data
•	Specific questions to ask the customer.

"What we've done, basically, is to build a mini mobile ERP solution that allows salespeople to work more efficiently, so they can move on to talking about value creation with the customer," Schøn says. "The salesperson gets POS data for each customer. They can review retail store statistics with the customer and even benchmark an individual store against performance in other stores. If the salesperson can tell the retailer something they didn't know, then ultimately it will help them increase sales," says Schøn.

The solution is already showing efficiency benefits. Toubol says that the new mobile solution has already freed 15 per cent of back-office order-handling resources, and he expects a 20 per cent increase in administrative productivity as well as a 50 per cent decrease in lost goods.

Illustration: A handheld device and a screen similar to the one used at KiMs lets salespeople in the field access a list of their customers.

What Will the Mobile Future Bring?
According to information technology (IT) and telecommunications analyst IDC, the number of mobile workers will grow from 650 million to 850 million workers by 2009. (Visit the IDC website.) That's one quarter of the entire worldwide workforce. Today, the norm is that only 23 per cent of all employees in an organisation use their company's ERP solution. So how will 200 million more workers begin using their company's business through a wireless connection?

At Microsoft, they plan to follow up on what they've started with the Mobile Sales Assistant by introducing mobile solutions for different roles. They also plan to integrate the wireless technology more tightly with other supply chain tools, such as RFID, alerts and demand planning, in order to give employees the information they need. Workers will only access the functions and information in their back-office solution that are relevant to their specific roles.

"Mobile technology gives us a way to bring more value to more employees," Schøn says. "Whether it's a service worker taking an order, a warehouse manager looking up inventory in a truck, or a shop floor manager checking the current status of jobs, we want to bring them all the information they need to do the best job possible right to their hands."

The Microsoft ‘Mini ERP System’ in a Handheld Device

A typical customer visit for a salesperson using the Mobile Sales Assistant solution created for KiMs might look like this:

1.	He looks at his customer-visit route plan on his mobile device.
2.	He arrives at an outlet of a retail chain of shops.
3.	He scans the bar code of a product with a reader built into his device. The cursor jumps straight to the item, and he is then fed POS information about that item directly from Microsoft Dynamics AX.
4.	"Did you know," he asks the customer, "that sales of salt and vinegar crisps are five per cent higher in some of your company's other shops where they're placed next to the beer?"
5.	With this new information in mind, the customer increases her order of this item, and the salesperson enters the quantity.
6.	The customer signs on the screen of the device and gets a confirmation from the mobile printer that the salesperson carries with him.

Illustration: Customers can sign for an order on a salesperson's handheld device.

Next Steps

•	Contact a member of our business team for more information about Microsoft Dynamics

Oren Shafir is a business journalist and partner at the Danish-based copywriting agency Word2Voice. He has been writing about IT issues, business management software and solutions, and supply chain management for more than a decade.

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