The M-Force

The dealer in Chennai's T-Nagar has an urgent call: someone wants office
furniture units today. He sends out an SMS, with the product code, to the
distributor. In ten seconds, he's got back the pricing, availability, and
color options. He closes a Rs 1.1 lakh order on the phone.

• It's urgent, says the caller from Proctor Road. He's got a customer
  for nine LCD monitors, and no stock. The distributor's territory manager
  in Andheri glances at the screen: there's a delivery van with stock, just
  past Peddar Road, heading to Nariman Point. An SMS goes out with the dealer
  address and 'ASAP'. On the other side of town, the van takes a U-turn.
  The manager watches the dot on the screen head to Proctor Road. "Ten
  minutes", he tells his caller.
• It's well past 24 hours, and we're pacing up and down: the package
  hasn't reached. We need the ad material like yesterday. Were they fibbing
  about having sent it? Call, ask for the consignment number. Enter it on the
  courier company site. And we get the answer: the package was delivered 3
  hours ago, down at our reception, signed for by Rajesh, the guard. Now we
  know where to look. We find it in minutes.
• It's late, and the five women have been waiting for an auto-rickshaw on
  Cunningham Road. Ten minutes down, there's a lone auto. That would still
  leave two of them stranded. But the auto driver's taken out his mobile. An
  SMS goes out to two others. Within five minutes,
  
  another auto joins in, and they all set out.

It's a mobile world. To keep up with it, businesses,
enterprises, and individuals have necessarily adopted a plethora of mobile
technologies across the planet-to different degrees. We don't yet see the
sophisticated location-based services from the last example in Singapore.

Location Based ServiceS: Haven't picked up in India due to lack of service provider support and good quality mapping content

The mobile voice revolution has happened in India. The next
wave is data. Well established across much of the world, it's early days yet
in India. But it's happening. And it's led by two killer mobile apps: SMS
and email.

For the numerous enterprises eyeing the adoption of mobile
applications, the leading driver is deriving competitive edge through improved
efficiencies and employee productivity. This is taking enterprise mobility to a
new level of 'anytime, anywhere' access to information. While voice remains.
and will continue to remain the most used application, enterprises are expanding
their horizons and beginning to look at the data part in a big way. Though a
little late in arriving, the data wave is all set to take off among the
enterprises in India. Triggering off in its wake the emergence of a whole new
generation of mobile applications that are taking enterprise applications like
ERP, CRM, SCM, etc right up to the domains of laptops, PDAs and mobile phones.

While some applications, like providing an SMS interface to
ERP and CRM, are a reality today in the Indian market, others like LBS (Location
Based Services) are yet to take off. Nevertheless, while some of the
applications seem a little far-fetched for the present times, they have the
potential to have a big impact on productivity and efficiency within the
enterprise.

The Catalysts: SMS & Email

Interestingly, even as the developer community is going on overdrive,
dishing out some of the most interesting and sophisticated applications, SMS and
e-mail over hand held continue to rule the domain, gaining maximum traction
among enterprises in India.

The two can be classified as horizontal applications cutting
across enterprises, functionalities, operations, and processes. Even though mass
adoption of these two applications may still be a distant reality in the Indian
market, the two can potentially revolutionize the enterprise space.

SMS clearly leads the charge on popularity. The ubiquity of
mobile phones in the country today makes SMS a pervasive application. Presently,
India's mobile phone penetration is much higher than the Internets and, hence,
SMS promises enterprises a wider footprint and higher levels of penetration even
to the remote areas where Internet connectivity is an issue. Another factor
clearly working in favor of SMS is its availability, which is not restricted to
high-end and expensive handsets, unlike mobile email. Thus making it ideal for
automating the sales force and field staff in an enterprise. Cost efficiency and
flexibility are some of the other factors.

E-mail over mobile phones and PDAs is a phenomenon that is
beginning to catch up among enterprises in India, particularly with two telecom
biggies-Airtel and Hutch-hawking their solutions actively. While Airtel has
been pushing its Blackberry aggressively in the enterprise space, Hutch has been
promoting its push email.

Email is a key enterprise communication medium and has a high
impact on productivity, even while on the move. Access during emergencies that
require immediate attention and action need not necessarily be restricted to
voice, considering there are documents and data to be exchanged, which can be
done on email.

According to Jay Vikram Bakshi, head of Marketing, Enterprise
Solutions, Nokia India, various researches indicate that the first application
most mobile users like to see integrated into their mobile phones is their
email.

While laptop is another alternative to accessing email while
on the move, a factor that will drive adoption of push email over phones and
PDAs will be the incentive to carry lesser number of devices. Though this might
not hold ground in some cases, like where the enterprise user is carrying his
laptop for applications other than just accessing email.

On the flip side, cost is likely to be a prohibitive factor,
thereby restricting its uptake largely to upper and middle management. So, as
far as automation of the sales force on the field goes, SMS is going to be the
most likely bet.

Vertical Limit

At a very broad level, there are a host of micro mobility applications
specific to the various processes in the enterprise, or even to vertical
domains, which can be accessed via a macro application. SMS over mobile phones
or GPRS on mobile phones or PDAs, or even as web applications to be accessed
through Internet over laptops by logging into corporate VPNs. The basic paradigm
is mobilizing the existing applications within the enterprise-ERP, CRM, SCM-and
extending them for 'anytime, anywhere' access.

On why enterprises will need to mobile-enable their ERP and
CRM applications, Vijay Shukla, country head, ValueFirst points out that there
is significant need in case of ERPs as stakeholders are not always connected by
wires but need a constant flow of information all the time. In the case of CRM,
customers are almost always mobile and, therefore, using the mobile channel for
customer communication becomes extremely critical.

Some of the leading applications which have presented a
business case for mobility include Sales Force Automation (SFA), Field Service
Applications (FSA) and CRM. In SFA, the entire sales cycle-right from sales
communication, sales MIS to order booking-is done wirelessly. In FSA, complete
customer support is done from a remote location via wireless transactions.

Atanu Mandal, president, ACL Wireless, thinks CRM
applications are possibly the most common apart from marketing campaigns and
lead generation. Dealer management applications are also being deployed
selectively. He further points out that there will be a range of applications
including customer service and productivity improvement that enterprises would
like to mobile-enable. "Volume of transactions will always be much higher
in CRM applications (B2C space) while higher end applications will be in the
productivity improvement domain (B2B space)," he explains.

As per experts, SFA and FSA are the two applications that
will see a dramatic change in deployment base in the next couple of years. Some
of the other, hot, mobile applications to look out for include m-banking,
m-commerce, RFID-based track & trace applications, and retail applications.

The Big Opportunity: LBS

The enterprise segment is touted to be a big market for Location Based
Services (LBS) worldwide. Some of the existing, and potential, enterprise
applications on LBS include vehicle-tracking system; and promotional activities
based on locations, asset, fleet, and workforce management. Globally,
enterprises are all set to integrate location capabilities into their existing
mobility applications. Companies, typically with a large sales staff, field
force, on the move service engineers, are likely to find a potential business
case for LBS.

Way To Go

As per experts worldwide, enterprise uptake of mobile applications is set
for phenomenal growth. By 2005, Gartner anticipates 65% of enterprises to
harness the power of wireless applications to efficiently automate their
existing business processes, and use wireless connectivity for one or more user
groups. The growing mobile phone penetration coupled with its 'anytime,
anywhere' access capability, is making it essential for enterprises to exploit
this domain.

Though Indian enterprises have started opening up their
applications to the mobile world, and awareness is building up, enterprises in
India are only in the nascent stage of deployment. On a scale of 1 to 10 experts
rate awareness and adoption levels at around 7 and 4 points, respectively.

"Awareness is very high. All companies have heard about
mobile solutions and how beneficial they might be to their company. They are,
however, unsure of the roadmap ahead, and that has influenced adoption
levels," says Ravi Subramanyam, director, MobileOne Infocom.

Wireless deployment requires a change in the mindset of
enterprises and also a significant dependence on mobile operators, who,
themselves, are not fully ready for enterprise mobility.

Take, for instance, LBS. The non-availability of LBS from
service providers is a huge prohibitive factor to its uptake by the Indian
market. The situation is sure to change once operators begin to see its
potential. In fact, the first step towards this is likely to be initiated
sometime in the very near future, with BSNL expected to start around 14
location-based services in some of its circles.

According to Debarshi Roy, vice president-Operations, Ontrack
Systems, operators are, for the time being, following a wait and watch policy:
"they are waiting for the commercial viability of offering LBS before they
get into this space aggressively." Besides, there are also issues on
handshaking with other operators. According to Dilip Singh, president, Telenity,
some of the key challenges for an LBS provider will be the ability to tackle
issues relating to user privacy, good quality maps and cost of services.

M-Productivity

While things may be at a nascent stage right now, at the ground level, there
is enough excitement building up in the air. The business case driving this
excitement is what is ultimately going to push mobility as an integral strategy
for these enterprises.

The reasons for adoption may vary from one enterprise to
another but the primary case is to extend information to where the business
people are. According to Arindam Bose, head-IT, LG Electronics India, "In
business, information is power. Mobile information helps in quick decisions
which, in turn, reduces time to market, creates ability for dynamic response to
market situations, and enables real time response to business issues."

Subramanyam says productivity, rather than cost, is a primary
driver: "Employee empowerment and increase in their productivity have been
key factors leading to the adoption of mobile and wireless applications
today."

Overall, some of the key advantages that enterprises are
eyeing include quicker turn around time so that there is no need to wait to
access data till connected by wires; increased productivity by making the same
team do more work by giving them relevant information real-time; and faster
decision making by making critical information available real-time. Besides, a
mobile enterprise can benefit from drastic reduction in staff travel time and
cost, and drop in expense from long-distance calls. Not to forget improved
customer service, as information would be available to the salesmen on the fly.

Eternal Worries: RoI & Security

While there is no dearth of applications and the inherent need also makes a
strong business case for adoption, back-end infrastructure, security, cost and
lack of availability of services from operators continue to be issues with
enterprises in India.

SR Balasubramanian, VP, Information System, Hero Honda,
provides an insight into some of the specific challenges from a CIO's point of
view. He says that the main concern is with respect to security, as enterprises
fear loss of control and leak-out of sensitive corporate information to
competitors. The next challenge, according to him, is the back-end integration
with applications: "It should be seamlessly integrated and not limited to
data passing and extraction, and this requires suitable planning. Atanu Mandal
of ACL Wireless agrees that the most common challenges faced by enterprises are
issues like back-end integration and security, along with cost of devices, which
is a big issue for GPRS-based enterprise application deployment.

RoI is another crucial challenge that enterprises are faced
with, considering that the market is still too young for them to be able to
conduct a detailed RoI study and analysis.

Akhil Pandey, head of department-IT at NDPL, adds another
perspective to the mobility challenge in terms of disaster recovery for mobile
devices, as most people lose data every time the mobile device crashes. Also,
physical security of mobile devices is very difficult to ensure.

The challenges and limitations as expressed by many a CIO and
business leader can be summed as:

• Reliability/Quality of service- Mobile operators do not
  offer stringent SLAs in India. The current focus of mobile operators is
  consumers and not enterprises.

• Support- High quality support is essential for
  enterprises. Unfortunately, not many service providers in India offer that

• Level of understanding of IT- backend with mobile
  operators

• Mobile operator specific services- A few mobile operators
  offer good service but only limited to their network. Hence, lack of
  operator-neutral services is a big limitation.

• Rapidly changing technologies

The Device Factor

While building mobile applications one cannot lose sight of the devices,
which form an integral part. According to Bakshi, the entire gamut of devices
ranging from laptops to PDAs, mobile phones, mobile phone cum PDAs, are going to
co-exist in the mobility ecosystem of an enterprise, and the extent of their
usage and popularity will be determined by the nature of the application. For
instance, laptop will be more suitable for applications like making
presentations and for working on very document-intensive applications. Whereas,
a mobile phone and PDA will be suitable where one just needs to keep in regular
touch with emails and basic information, as well as for SFA kind of applications
wherein it might be cumbersome for the sales staff to tag along the laptop.

Mobile phones do command an edge, in terms of popularity, owing
to the cost as well as the wider-reach factor. Overall, as Subramanyam points
out, a device which does not weigh much, is very portable and mobile, can fit
into the pocket of an individual, has a reasonably sized display and is
readable, is integrated with a phone and a keypad, and does not cost much, would
be the best form factor for powering mobile solutions.

But, it is the cost of devices along with the business case for
applications and RoI, that will ultimately determine the pace of adoption among
enterprises, not only in India but also in the world.

Shipra Arora

WalMart: Speeding up retail

RFID is being touted as the next generation in enterprise
mobility. One of its early adopters, WalMart, now has more than 500 RFID-enabled
stores and clubs, and 5 distribution centers. 200 suppliers will join the
existing 130, in January 2006, shipping EPC-tagged cases and pallets.

A study of the impact of RFID adoption at WalMart shows that
RFID-equipped stores were 63% more effective in replenishing out-of-stock
merchandise compared to non-RFID-equipped stores. It also found a 16% reduction
in out-of-stock merchandise, and, out-of-stock items with RFID were replenished
three times faster than items using standard bar-codes. There was also a
reduction in manual orders resulting in reduction of excess inventory, according
to the report. Also, RFID-enabled pilot stores outperformed non-RFID in
providing improved on-shelf availability of items for customers.

ING Vysya: ValueFirst banking

ING Vysya Bank uses the mobile data services of ValueFirst as an
alternate medium of interaction between the Bank and its customers and
employees. Services offered include Broadcast, which allows the bank to send
promotional messages to consumers; Schedule, through which the bank sends
messages to its customers on a predefined schedule basis; and Events, which
allows an SMS to be sent automatically to the customer when a certain event
happens.

Enquiry and m-commerce are services still at the pilot stage.
Enquiry provides interactivity to customers who can, through SMS, get answers in
real time and m-commerce service will allow various commercial transactions.

Allianz Bajaj: Two-way SMSing

Allianz Bajaj has tied up with ValueFirst to provide both push
and pull options to customers, wherein they are sent daily updates. Customers
have an option to pull and check their policy status or push to receive
information about services.

Insurance consultants get daily updates on the status of their
proposal and requirements for policy completion, also personal information on
clients, helping them provide better service. Daily business figures are sent to
top management, and sales teams can directly communicate with on-the-field staff
via SMSs; which is also used to alert on-the-field agents about appointments and
other details, and for internal communication.

Indian Airlines: Upgrading customers

Thanks to the SMS-based service, the Indian Airlines (IA)
passengers are now able to get details relating to arrival/departure by sending
keywords and parameters relating to flight number, origin, and destination,
using the IA short code-67671407.

IA can now also provide timely updates to customers via SMS. The
application reads the data from the IA mainframe server and processes it to
compose and push messages on the available mobile numbers for their respective
flights. SMS specific URLs were built to fetch data from the IA server and post
it to wMS AQR application as per the SMS request. To make the service more
user-friendly, the application was created to accept city names rather than
restricting to city codes. Scenario based error and help messages have also been
built to make the service more usable.

DSP Merrill Lynch: Investing made easy

DSP Merrill Lynch Mutual Fund India wanted to provide data on
various mutual funds schemes and indices on SMS. The requirement was to create
pull and push based mobile services to allow users to request and receive
instant data on their mobile handset.

ACL Wireless provided an SMS based query-response mechanic using
ACL's AQR setup. It provided unique short code 67672855 (6767BULL) for all
DSPML Mutual Fund information. Customers just have to send an SMS with a keyword
to get the current or historical NAV of the requested schemes. ACL also provided
the interface format to allow DSPML to post the push messages at ACL gateway. As
an integrated marketing approach, all the response messages are sent through
DSPML as alphanumeric masking of its short code, helping the organization brand
its services.