Technology is allowing workers to stay in contact no matter where they are. How do you choose the right combination of hardware, software, data transport, and voice transport, then secure the whole lot and make sure your organisation is set up to take advantage?
There are two questions that should be asked at the outset of a mobility project, says Matt Dalton, market development manager for notebooks at Hewlett-Packard: "Why are you taking your workers mobile?" and "What information do they need while they are mobile?" The answers help inform decisions about hardware and communications technology, though he notes that it is not always appropriate to mandate the use of a PDA rather than a notebook, or vice versa. It may be better to let individual users make the choice, as there is no payback without utilisation.
Organisations must ask which section of their workforce can benefit from mobility, says Robin Simpson, research director -- mobile and wireless at Gartner Group. It may be as little as 15-20 percent, and within that different roles have different requirements. Gartner identifies five categories.
- Message-centric workers, including senior managers.
- Knowledge workers who face unstructured, unpredictable tasks and tend to move around and outside the office.
- Field workers such as those in logistics, sales, and service require notification and alerts, information about their next jobs, and a simple reply mechanism.
- Forms workers, who have very structured tasks involving field data reference or collection.
- Power workers, who need the fastest notebooks and the fastest communications to meet their requirements for collaboration and other functions.
Vodafone business solutions manager Jason Murray notes the presence of several groups among his GPRS (general packet radio service -- a common data technology for mobile phones) customers, including the construction industry (eg, project managers), client relations staff in various industries (who may spend two or three days per week at customer sites), government (including a cluster of around 300 people using it for Terminal Services access when travelling locally and overseas), and senior managers. The overlap with Gartner's categories is apparent.
