Mobile and Wireless

The Internet has created new business opportunities and has driven the restructuring of many industries. Mobile Internet is doing the same—in other industries and in other ways. With IFS Applications, companies can take advantage of new opportunities, whatever they may be. One service provider attributes a 20% increase in productivity to its technicians' use of mobile access to IFS Applications.

Mobility

Traditionally, the workforce in the field has received little or no help from the administrative IT system. But that's changing. The mobile and wireless revolution is driving new and exciting opportunities for enterprises around the world, providing tools to conduct business anytime, anywhere.
The result? A seamless flow of information between mobile devices and ERP systems—creating quantitative and qualitative business benefits such as increased productivity, shortened lead times and increased customer satisfaction. There is little doubt that the mobile revolution is changing the way business is done. And your enterprise has to be ready. 

IFS Applications supports technologies for combinations of online and offline wireless access. A good example is IFS eService Order, a packaged interface specially designed for field-service technicians. They can use PDAs for assignment details, service object data, customer information and on-site work reporting. This type of mobile access boosts efficiency and reporting accuracy, saves time and shortens invoicing cycles. When the workday is finished, the device is docked for synchronization with IFS Applications. Although in its infancy, mobile commerce —“m commerce”— and other forms of mobile interaction with the Internet are growing in importance. Analysts predict that the number of mobile users using WAP or other Internet-enabled protocols will top 500 million by 2005.

Keeping it simple

Mobile solutions require, at minimum, occasional wireless network access. In controlled environments like offices and warehouses, the use of wireless LANs means that access can be practically guaranteed—allowing solutions to be built without the need for additional software infrastructure. A web server and a PDA (or mobile telephone) with a web browser
is all that is needed.

IFS offers warehousing and other mobile solutions for this environment as an addition to the portal and web interface. Designed for use on devices with limited screen space and processing power, these solutions use a simplified HTML mark-up to assure that they will function correctly on a variety of devices. We have constructed navigation and use such that text input—the most time-consuming aspect
of PDA use—is minimized.

Next Generation mobile business applications

For field workers and out-of-office workers, guaranteeing wireless network access is not practical, and often impossible. Urban areas often lack mobile telecommunications coverage. Basements, tunnels, and other poor-reception areas pose problems. For specific industries such as defense, additional restrictions may apply. With the next generation mobile applications, developed jointly by IFS and IBM, operation is “online when available”. Users can continue working with their applications whether a connection is available or not. Synchronization with the central system takes place transparently in the background as soon as a connection becomes available. This gives the best of two worlds—the ability to work in any place and at any time while keeping
the business updated in near real time— and avoids the inefficiencies caused by infrequent daily or weekly synchronization.

The solutions developed by IFS and IBM also attack another obstacle in mobile business—the rapidly growing number of different devices used. Pocket PCs, Palm Pilots, Linux PDAs and Symbian powered telephones are commonplace today. Because our solutions are based on the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), they can be used on all of these platforms—preventing technology lock-in and allowing enterprises to purchase different device types as development progresses. This is truly a future-proof solution.

Barcode solutions

Using barcodes and scanners to input complex codes like part number and serial numbers has great savings potential. Vendors like Symbol and Intermec have made ruggedized PDAs with built-in barcode scanners available at affordable prices. IFS deliver solutions on hardware from these business partners.

IFS Applications is enabled for barcode input throughout. More specialized barcode applications like sequenced scanning are supported through IFS Applications integration to Wavelink Studio.