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Smartphones Get Down To Business
Besides effective management, organizations looking to make broad rollouts of handheld computing and communications devices face several other challenges, including the increasing complexity of the devices and the lack of standards—and the interoperability problems that can occur as a result.
"There will never be a standard [operating system for devices] but rather a collection, and those will to some degree interoperate," says Ken Dulaney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "The handheld market is like the PC market would have been had there been no Microsoft-the good and the bad."
Still, companies that have deployed handhelds say they're seeing benefits.
Law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP in Detroit recently standardized on Research in Motion BlackBerries "as a means of streamlining general operational support, since the most recent models have evolved significantly in supporting not only email but attachments, calendars, contacts and phone capability," says Tracey Baetzel, director of information services at the firm.
Most of the lawyers at the firm use BlackBerries to maintain contact with clients and each other while traveling and outside normal office hours, Baetzel says. "Most lawyers would probably say it helps them provide better client service, because they can respond promptly to messages and get research or other actions started quickly," she says.
That leads to faster turnaround on important projects, Baetzel says. Another benefit is the devices allow people to do administrative work, such as monthly expenses and timekeeping, outside of business hours.
The biggest challenge of using the handhelds is that they have become such a necessity that continuous fault tolerance is essential, Baetzel says.
Having to provide support for users also creates service and financial demands on IT.
"Dealing with all of the carriers involved in the mobile technology can be confusing for generalist users; each phone carrier has different coverage areas and issues, each hotel network is slightly different, and these differences can be frustrating to occasional users who are dependent on access to our systems," she says.
Another company, Optimus Solutions, a technology solutions provider in Atlanta that has many field-based sales and technical personnel, also has standardized on BlackBerries as a cell/PDA device. Mobile workers use the devices for email and to access business applications such as customer relationship management.
Among the benefits of the devices are reduced time to respond to changes in the market, increased mobility of employees in the field, and lower telecom costs, says Sandy Potter, vice president, business development at Optimus.
"Personally, I'm now able to travel without having to deal with an email barrage when I return," Potter says. "Additionally, I'm able to facilitate movement of projects/requests so my team isn't delayed by waiting for me to synch up my laptop once back at the hotel."
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