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Vol 32 - No 03 - May 2006 Editorial: Editor’s Letter The accuracy of information flowing across the supply chain has improved with mobile technology. As one of the leading consultants within wireless technology explains: “Companies have spent tremendous amounts of time and money building sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other automated back-office systems. But in many cases, at the bottom levels of the organisation, you still find people running around with a clip-board and pen.” This virtually guarantees inaccuracies by the time the data is manually entered into the system. Equipping workers with wireless data-entry units or, alternatively, equipping the goods themselves with a wireless link, reduces the margin for error. The same applies in the areas of customer relationships and time to market. In both cases, better communication between all participants along the supply chain can improve the customer experience, speed up problem resolution and, ultimately, the product lifecycle. For example, the location coordinates of a delivery vehicle can be tracked using GPS (global positioning system) and the information relayed via SMS (or text message) to head office, giving managers a real-time picture of their progress in relation to the central schedule. While 3G services amplify some of the benefits, all of this is possible using existing mobile technologies. However for companies to push past their justified skepticism about the latest wheeze of management consultants, a number of technical and organisational barriers on the vendor side need to be overcome. Ovum, wrote in a recent report:“ Network operators tend to be keen on online-only solutions. Unsurprisingly, these involve the use of lots of expensive airtime and application vendors are keen for their customers to access their applications in any way that allows full functionality to be retained, this rules out the use of many simply mobile devices.” Fortunately, both are coming to realise that having their own way in the short term could hurt their longer-term prospects. The number of formal alliances between operators, vendors and systems integrators such as Management Consultants, is growing, as a means of lowering the barriers to widespread adoption. In the meantime, analysts agree it will be months before wireless hits the mainstream in Europe. This should give companies plenty of time to reconsider the wireless equation and begin trailing the technology inside their own organisations. Please read the articles to enhance your knowledge in this technological age. Malcolm Granger, FIOM, Editor Related Topics:
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