When to Go Low-tech!

I recently came across one of the most earth-shattering concepts I’ve encountered in my career in the mobile enterprise software arena. At first glance, it appeared completely counter-intuitive, but upon further examination and exploration the idea became obvious and appealing. If you’ve ever read any of my articles, you’ll know that I’m a strong advocate for taking full advantage of mobile devices in the enterprise, not just as personal organizers but as platforms for robust productivity and line-of-business applications. However, I also believe that enterprise technology should never be used simply for its own sake. No technology, including Pocket PCs, should be used if it doesn’t improve the business that implements it.

Real world is teacher

This concept came to me in the same manner that I receive almost all of my knowledge and experience: from real-world clients. An organization had a problem. They had a potential liability that could cost them tens of millions of dollars. Fortunately, they had also learned that this liability could be offset for only a few million dollars a year through a manual prevention program. Upon further research and creative thinking, they came up with a plan to automate this process using mobile technology such as Pocket PCs, Wi-Fi, and RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification). When they approached my firm with this idea, I must admit that I was very excited. I knew that it could turn out to be a fairly decent-sized contract.

Upon further consultations with them, we learned that Pocket PCs with RFID readers would be required at several thousand different locations. The solution would require a global data center and data synchronization mechanism, as well as a fairly significant help-desk staff to support the plethora of issues related to a widespread deployment. After carefully examining their problem and their potential solution, we determined that their solution would initially cost about 80% of what the manual process would have cost annually, but that it would cost only a fraction of that amount to support and maintain the solution. Needless to say, I believe that everyone was quite pleased with the prospect of implementing the solution.

What is actually required?

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that it happened, but it eventually just hit me: there was a better way to solve my client’s problem than my elegantly designed distributed mobile application. It came down to the basic requirements. None of the design mandates—the use of a central data synchronization mechanism, the complex data management and administration system, or the seemingly overwhelming task of achieving reliable connectivity at thousands of remote locations—were actually required to solve the root problem!

The only reason that the automated solution would have cost less than the manual solution was that a Pocket PC is capable of rapidly executing complex calculations that the average human simply can’t perform both quickly and accurately, even with a calculator. This limitation of human beings mandated that the manual solution implement a roundabout process of gathering, analyzing, checking, and double-checking the data. But what would happen if the manual process, using paper-based forms, telephones, faxes, and snail mail, were to have the capabilities of the Pocket PC at its disposal? What would happen if the manual process were re-engineered around the number-crunching potential of a Pocket PC? As the elegant simplicity of the subsequent solution solidified in my mind, I was faced with a stunning realization.

The conclusion was inescapable: I was guilty of wireless overkill.

Back to square one

Over a million dollars in back-end hardware and software, connectivity, and support expenses had just instantly evaporated. What was left was a small, simple, stand-alone Pocket PC application that interfaced solely to a human being, leveraging such technology as pen, paper, postage stamps, and a phone.