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August 14, 2002 Key ApplicationsApplications for M-Business within the enterprise can be broken into those that affect employees, customers, suppliers, and business partners. This short introduction to wireless applications within the enterprise will serve as a sampling of the subject matter. This matter will be treated in much greater detail throughout the rest of the book, in case studies and in the exploration of applications including business intelligence, customer relationship management, sales force automation, field force automation, and supply chain management. Analyst surveys in the U.S. and Europe have shown that employees will benefit first from wireless enablement of the enterprise. M-Business applications will be used to increase employee productivity and will be followed by applications that are offered to customers, partners, and suppliers. Thus, the broad categories of wireless enablement within the enterprise can be listed as follows:
The B2B category includes supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, and electronic marketplaces. The B2E category includes the sales force and field service workers in addition to executives, managers, and office workers. It is important that a holistic strategy is adopted for these categories of wireless enablement. For example, employees may well need to gain access to the same applications, processes, and information as customers or partners. Additionally, as we shall discover in some of the case studies such as ADC Telecommunications, M-Business initiatives targeted for customers often turn out to be highly desirable for internal employee access as well. All three of these categories of wireless enablement are briefly discussed in this section with a focus on some of the areas of opportunity and their benefits to the enterprise. Wireless Enablement of EmployeesWireless enablement for employees is basically about giving employees the access to the information and transactions they need in order to perform their work-related activities. Wireless enablement can take the form of an extension of existing enterprise applications into the wireless domain. Or it can take the form of entirely new applications built from the ground up (either package or custom) specifically for use in a wireless or mobile scenario. These applications can have a profound productivity improvement for employees, the sales force, the field force, and for executives within an enterprise. The following table (2-5) presents some of the areas of opportunity for wireless enablement of employees and the benefits that may be realized:
Wireless Enablement of CustomersWireless enablement of customers can take many forms: branded cell phones or pagers to increase customer loyalty; access to hotel and airline reservations and information; telematics services for emergency location and assistance; M-Commerce transactions for wireless purchases such as stocks; wireless access to order status information; product and service information via wireless enablement of a corporate Web site; alerts and notifications on items of interest; locationbased services for marketing; unified messaging for customer support; wireless gami The challenge on the business-to-consumer side for the enterprise is to use wireless technologies and applications in order to deepen the relationship with the customer. This needs to be done while providing applications that are easy-to-use, fulfill a need on the customer end, are actionable or informational, and support the diverse set of devices, networks, and standards in use by consumers and business customers. Table 26 presents some of the areas of opportunity for wireless enablement of customers and the benefits that may be realized: Wireless Enablement of Partners and SuppliersWireless enablement of partners and suppliers can take on many aspects based upon the role of the partner or supplier. Partners may be resellers, value-added resellers, distributors, wholesalers, suppliers, OEMs, industry associations, and electronic marketplace participants. A taxonomy for the various roles of partners is very much needed if one is not yet in existence. In this section, we take a look at partners in the traditional supply chain and also within electronic marketplaces. The supply chain can benefit from wireless enablement in almost every process, including purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, and customer service and sales. Mobile technologies have long been used within the supply chain and have typically consisted of bar code scanners for improved data capture and asset management. New devices such as ruggedized handhelds from Symbol supporting both Palm OS and Windows CE operating systems, and additional means of connecivity including wireless LANs and wireless WANs mean that supply chain operations have a full range of alternatives for how, where, and when information is captured and acted upon. Information, goods, and funds flows between partners in the supply chain can now move in real-time versus near real-time or nightly batch operations. As various industries buy and sell products and services through public or private electronic marketplaces, there is a need for continuous communications with these marketplaces in order to gather pricing information, news and events, order status, bid status, approval requests, and sales histories.
Extending these public or private electronic marketplaces with access via wireless devices can provide a solution to this need for continuous information and transactions. One of the most simple examples is that of being alerted to bidding events such as an outbid notification during an online auction. The time criticality of the auction process means that wireless access to the marketplace is an essential tool for many participants. The following table (2-7) presents some of the areas of opportunity for wireless enablement of partners and suppliers and the benefits that may be realized: For more details and examples about M-Business application functionality, scenarios and benefits for the enterprise please see the M-Business Applications and Processes section within Chapter 4, Process Models and Applications for M-Business Agility. This chapter goes into detail on categories such as business intelligence, sales force automation, field force automation, customer relationship management, and supply chain management. Additionally, you can find numerous real-life case studies in Chapter 5, Industry Examples.
Business Agility LessonsConsumer Market
Enterprise Market
This is a sample chapter of Business Agility: Strategies for Gaining Competitive Advantage through Mobile Business Solutions (ISBN: 0-13-066837-0). For the full text, visit http://www.phptr.com ©2001 Pearson Education. All Rights Reserved. # # # | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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