Seeing is believing; new mobile services offer the potential for better communication inside and outside the organization.

"We're moving away from the business of ears to the business of eyes."

During the mobile industry trade event CeBIT 1998, this statement by Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's legendary marketing chief, electrified the conference crowd. Now that data communication is replacing voice communication, a revolution in mobile services is poised to have an impact on business worldwide.

Until the mid-1990s, mobile services were driven by voice communication and, to some extent, by text messaging (short-message service, or SMS). Today, data drives mobile services. Multimedia cellular (3G), wireless broadband (Wi-FI, WiMAX) and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), among other technologies, enable vast new opportunities to help communicators in a variety of fields do their jobs more effectively.

In addition to the conversion from physical paper to mobile online forms, the mobile generation provides four groups of services:

1. Rich voice and data. Over time, rich voice communication will include mobile videophone and multimedia. Videophone service, in the form of camera phones, for instance, can provide clients and customers with a quick view of products, help maintain closer ties between office and field operations, or simply enable colleagues to talk to one another.

2. Mobile Internet, intranet and extranet. These services facilitate business communication via mobile portals, banners and the like. They provide secure mobile access to corporate networks and the Internet, including access to desktop applications (e-mail, contact lists, spreadsheets, corporate management systems and so on). They are particularly important to mobile employees, including sales and marketing professionals in communication-intensive industries such as finance, transportation and insurance.

3. Messaging. These services include SMS (text) as well as MMS (multimedia messaging services). A component of MMS is location-based services--localized content that may include weather reports, news, hotel and restaurant information, traffic and travel reports, navigational services, and mobile commerce.

4. Personalized content. With the launch of i-mode in 1999, NTT DoCoMo developed four personalized content service categories: information, entertainment, database and transactions. All allow for a wide variety of business applications, such as news (information), product demonstration (entertainment), delivery status inquiries (database) and credit card information (transactions).

"In addition to the entertainment and interactive capabilities, you can use your phone as your wallet," says Takeshi Natsuno, the architect of NTT DoCoMo's highly popular mobile services. "Your credit cards, loyalty cards, money, keys--all that stuff in your purse or wallet--can go into the phone. Ultimately, it will contribute to revenue flows, vis-a-vis real commerce."

Over time, static content will become dynamic. Indeed, dynamic advancements--MMS, video messaging and telephony, not to mention mobile TV--offer great potential for business communication.

Consider two offerings available through NTT DoCoMo's high-speed FOMA service: V-Live, which enables streaming video in real time to support services such as remote monitoring for training and security purposes, and Visualnet, which enables videoconferencing for up to eight participants through real-time video image transmission.

"With mobile devices, retailers now have an end-to-end opportunity to overhaul the entire customer experience, distribution and inventory," says Deborah S. Conrad, vice president of Intel's sales and marketing group. "Procter & Gamble or Wal-Mart can deliver customer information in real time, in New York City and Detroit, because of their wireless network. In health care, if you are a doctor and you are in a patient's room, you can reach into your notebook computer and get much information about the patient's case."

Understanding service and mobility needs

Whether they work for large multinationals, small start-ups, public agencies or nonprofit organizations, employees need a fair number of basic services during the workday. In order to develop appropriate services, it is vital to understand the service needs of individual employees.

But just as service needs vary by employee and over time, so does the need for employee mobility. Some employees stay at the same location throughout the working day, whereas others may have frequent domestic or international business trips. When assessing the mobile communication tools available, it is vital to understand the mobility needs of individual employees.

Low mobility needs are typical of employees who stay in one place most of the day, such as assembly line workers in a car plant, call center service representatives or fast-food workers. People who spend more than one day a week outside their office or home site, such as sales representatives, tend to have high mobility needs. Medium mobility characterizes people, such as academic professionals and managers in assembly plants, whose needs tend to alternate between nonmobile and highly mobile. Similarly, the degree and type of mobility required by users varies. For instance, the mobility profile of telecommuters differs from that of business travelers.

By combining the estimated service and mobility needs into user profiles, it is possible to develop employee profiles to understand the needs of individual employees. These make the success stories possible.

Take, for instance, the lower development and maintenance costs realized at Dollar Rent A Car. Dollar is one of the world's largest car rental agencies, with more than 400 locations in 26 countries. By providing partners with direct, secure access to its reservation system, Dollar was able to cost-effectively open up another sales channel that has provided millions of additional rate requests and thousands of new reservations per year, equating to millions of dollars in additional revenue. For Dollar, a key benefit of this capability was the relatively low cost of acquisition for new reservations.

Mobile business services

As a business tool, mobile services can provide numerous efficiencies. Salespeople can gain mobile access to company databases; managers may maintain voice, image and text contact with field staff; and marketers can receive accurate feedback in real time.

Enhanced dispatch management is just one area that can provide gains. For example, Japan's Otsuka Shokai sells office equipment and offers after-sales support. The company gets some 5,000 calls from customers each day, and when repairs are required, operators have to arrange orders with 1,200 engineers located in 220 offices nationwide. The operators used to receive repair orders by phone, fax them to service support centers, and call the centers to confirm receipt of the order. The assigned engineer would then call the customer to arrange a time, and upon completion of the job, the engineer would return to the center to make a report. The system was inefficient and made scheduling very difficult.

Today, Otsuka Shokai uses NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service for dispatch management and reporting. Using mobile phones, the support centers can dispatch engineers and send them repair details, and the engineers can submit repair reports to the center. Moreover, the company is able to keep those repair records in a database.

Mobilization is also subverting inbound logistics--that is, all the activities associated with receiving, storing and disseminating inputs to the product, including material handling, warehousing, inventory control, vehicle scheduling and returns to suppliers. For instance, U.S. Customs officials inspect inbound aircraft and sea vessels at more than 300 air and sea ports of entry. At Miami International Airport, the agency wanted to make the time officers spent in the field conducting inspections more efficient while increasing the accuracy of data collected. Armed with Pocket PCs, agents report saving almost one workweek per month and reducing errors by 80 percent through automation and digitization.

The same is true for distribution--the activities associated with collecting, storing and physically distributing the product to buyers, including finished-goods warehousing, material handling, delivery vehicle operation, order processing and scheduling. For example, Egmont Entertainment, Scandinavia's leading distributor of films for cinema, TV and video as well as electronic games, outfitted its field salespeople with Pocket PCs to receive information and enter orders at retailer outlets, enabling them to visit 20 percent more customers per day.

Information technology pervades the value chain because every activity involves the creation, processing and communication of information. With the Internet, many physical activities have been virtualized to gain greater efficiencies or differentiation. Mobilization is driven by the same logic.

Mobilize--but strategically

Like the Internet, mobility provides companies new ways to achieve operational and positioning advantages, but it also makes it harder for them to sustain those advantages. Fast adoption of mobility may generate short-term pioneer advantages but not necessarily economic value. All firms can mobilize, but only a few know how to mobilize strategically. Successful implementations tend to capitalize on subsequent stages:

* Understanding users. First, it is vital to understand the value activities of the firm, the competitive characteristics of the industry and the employee mobile profile. The success of mobility depends in part on how well employees can integrate mobile tools and functions into their daily work style.

* Assessing timing. To reap the full benefits of mobility, companies must assess the degree of the technology maturity and the readiness of the market to accept new products and services.

* Aligning mobility. With mobility, the promise is in the reach and the immediacy of the new media. Mobility--just like CRM and other enabling technologies--is not an end in and of itself. It is an instrument for company strategy. Adoption is not enough; mobility must be aligned with strategy.

* Training and piloting. User training is essential to ensure that employees make the most of available technology and solutions, while pilot implementations will help the business understand how it can optimize its return on investment.

The winners will be those companies that can dynamically master new technologies, while aligning mobility with strategy.

This article is based on Dan Steinbock's The Mobile Revolution (Kogan Page, 2005), which is based on interviews with 80 senior executives representing the world's leading mobile businesses, from operators to Hollywood studios.

RELATED ARTICLE: Connection--or fashion?

Not all mobile communication is communication. In the early days of the Internet revolution, e-mails were portrayed as a killer application that would enhance efficiency. A few years later, even the dot-com gurus were buried by piles of e-mails and spam. Most new media start as fads, and mobile technologies are no exception.

Today, individual technology attainment is less about technology and more about being fashionable. "I need the new Nikes in the same way I'm going to need a new cell phone," says Dave McCaughan, director of strategic planning, consumer insights, at McCann Erickson Asia Pacific. "It's the thing to do. It's what I see on television.

"In the Japanese marketplace, 80 percent of housewives have mobile phones that they use daily," he continues. "One person I interviewed put it best by saying that 'the mobile phone is the 21st century's cigarette.' It is what you do to fill time."

Mobile communication enables optimal business communication--but only if it is deployed for that purpose. Coffee enables increased activity, but most Starbucks customers probably think less about productivity and more about hanging out.

--D.S.

Consulting for international organizations and multinationals, Dan Steinbock is a Fulbright scholar and is currently director of the New York City office of Finland's Academy of Sciences.

Finding the right service for your employees' needs

Different communication needs demand different technologies. Here are
some examples of the tools that are enabling better employee
communication.

Voice                Voice (simple or rich voice calls in the office or
                     on the move)
Internet             E-mail (e-mail to PC or mobile phone); PIM
                     (calendar, phone book, contacts); business
                     connectivity (access to intranet/extranet/Internet
                     from PC/laptop/mobile phone)
Communication        Messaging (voice, text, multimedia, instant
                     messaging)
Business Processes   Office applications (Notes, MS) and company-
                     specific vertical applications