Secret ROIs from Mobilizing Business Solutions

There are many obvious advantages and cost savings that come from mobilizing paper processes. You enter the data once in the field and wirelessly synchronize with your database application. You avoid the office staff needing to re-type all the information, you avoid introducing typos during data entry, and you speed up the process of making the data available for other mission critical business applications and business analytics. Yet there are many not so obvious advantages to replacing paper processes. Here are a few for your consideration:

-Mobile field workers don't have to drive to the office just to deliver their paper forms
-Mobile field workers don't have to drive to the office just to pick-up their paper forms and assignments
-Invoicing can be completed much quicker since work can be updated from the field for immediate processing (better cash management)
-When using handheld computers you can avoid issues with bad handwriting
-Mobile software applications can validate the data entered at the time of entry
-You can attach digital photos directly to your data on the handheld
-You can push data out to the handheld so the field user has continuously updated information
-Field users can preform their own database queries on their handheld, thus avoiding the need to use office staff
-Handheld computers that have GPS functionality with mapping software can help the field worker find their next job site without asking office staff for directions
-Handheld computers with GPS functionality can report the location of the field worker to help managers better organize service responses
-Handheld computers can be used not only to collect data, but to compute the data and show results in the field
-Buttons on the screen of your mobile application can be configured to perform all kinds of queries, computations, analytics and many more time consuming features (recently we created a mobile solution that would provide a route delivery driver with predictive product re-stocking numbers at the push of a button based upon the past 12 months stocking numbers)
-Disciplined business processes - mobile software solutions can be configured to ensure the field user follows the appropriate business processes based upon the data entered (a specific answer can force a separate business process - for example - the geiger counter attached to your handheld shows dangerous levels of radiation - a message pops-up warning you to cover your private parts with a lead fig leaf)

These are just a few of the not so obvious benefits of mobilizing. Please email me any additions that you want me to add to this list.