Yet despite outward appearances, wireless technology is poised for takeoff. Though unsettled, the technologies are basically sound, and business drivers -- from a growing mobile workforce to declining device and component costs -- will force companies to investigate the applicability of wireless technologies to their businesses. This article examines the factors that will lead to the acceptance and growth of wireless technology and how enterprise applications offer the best opportunities to gain immediate value from wireless solutions

Why hasn't wireless technology taken the corporate world by storm? Current generation wireless technologies are complex and unsettled. Few IT professionals have the expertise to independently implement a project. Stability -- a hallmark of a mature technology -- is lacking with wireless, making companies understandably reluctant to invest money in vendors, products and services with questionable viability. Lack of standards, competing platforms, and heavy dependence on external consultants and service providers make the selection process difficult and risk prone. With few bulletproof, out-of-the-box commercial solutions available, organizations are intimidated by the prospect of putting the pieces together themselves.

Given these woes, will wireless technology ever live up to its promise? The answer is a resounding "yes"! Despite the current bleakness in the telecommunications sector, nothing has occurred to disprove or undermine wireless technology itself. The technology is ultimately sound, and the reasons for deploying it remain valid. Unlike many ERP and CRM implementations, it has not been the subject of any high-profile project failures. Although there are glitches with the technology, historically these types of snags get worked out and worked out rapidly. As the technology improves, so do the applications. And, as the applications improve, they drive advances in the technology.

Why exactly is wireless technology poised for takeoff? Consider these top four factors:

• Working wirelessly is inevitable

The workforce is already mobile and growing. According to one report, in the U.S. alone, mobile workers are expected to increase from 92 million to 105 million strong by 2006. ¹ Rather than stranding these mobile workers, wireless and mobile access to information connects workers with the data they need to make faster and more reliable decisions. Armed with tools and information no matter their location, mobile workers are no longer at a disadvantage compared to their office-bound peers. Activities and services can be moved to the locations where they make the most sense, whether it's closer to the customer, in remote or rural areas, or in transit.

Within the workplace, be it an office or assembly line, wireless usage is also on the upswing. Wireless networks eliminate the inconvenience and hassles of laying cables, and are often the only option where safety, space limitations or moving parts prohibit the use of more permanent, wired networks.

• Wireless is the technology of choice for up-and-coming generations

Teenagers and students, already addicted to and proficient in wireless technologies, are the employees of the future. For them, working wirelessly in their professional lives will be a natural and expected extension of how they operate in their personal lives. Vendors of all kinds also have powerful incentives to hook the "average" person on wireless, putting additional pressure on enterprises to adopt the technology.

• Lower, and still declining, end-user infrastructure costs

Excluding cellular network buildouts, wireless infrastructure costs are declining. Enterprise costs for WLAN equipment are dropping, and Bluetooth chip prices are falling. Handheld device costs are down or holding even. Although pricing plans have yet to stabilize for wireless data services, competition should keep these costs in check for the foreseeable future. As wireless becomes an attractive, cost-effective option, market penetration will explode.

In developing countries and rural and remote areas, where it is too expensive to offer wired, landline services, wireless technology is a boon. Even in industrialized areas of Asia and Western Europe, wireless technology is an inexpensive alternative to wired services. Companies and people in these locations have little incentive to invest in wired products or services that face waning demand.

Combined with GPS and other location tracking technologies, wireless offers superior monitoring and alert capabilities at a low cost. Monitoring assets such as cargo in transit, ice making equipment, or even parts containers on the assembly line is a cheaper alternative to hiring personnel to perform site visits or daily service calls.

• Complements and supports the direction of co-existing technologies

Wireless technology makes sense. It complements and supports the evolution of co-existing technologies. In the past decade, the technology industry has been moving aggressively toward the concept of pervasive computing, whether at home, at work, in the car, at the store or while traveling. The goal is to provide the same access to systems, applications, data and services from any locale. Wireless technology not only fosters the idea of pervasive computing, it makes it possible.

Likewise, the concept of anywhere, anytime access to data first introduced by the Internet is furthered by wireless technology. It is great to have 24/7 access to information, but it is unrealistic to believe that people will remain chained to their desktop computers at all times. Internet availability, coupled with the convenience of wireless, brings the 24x7 ideal to fruition.

Lastly, wireless technology extends the value of collaborative work environments. Tying parties together electronically overcomes the limitations of traditional communication mechanisms, and allows them to work together efficiently despite geographic differences. Customers can interact with vendors. Teachers and students can share assignments and schedules. Supply chain partners can trade and settle transactions. Doctors and patients can monitor health. Wireless technology allows these communications and collaborations to proceed regardless of physical location, and with maximum convenience for the user.

Given these four factors, the widespread adoption of wireless technology is not a question of "if" but a matter of "when." And as we saw with Internet adoption, once started, "when" will arrive quickly.

With wireless technology ready to take off, smart companies will position themselves now to ride the wave. Companies that choose to wait until wireless applications reach the mainstream will lower their technology risks, but at the cost of missing more significant business benefits. These benefits include the immediate business value of a wireless application, the ability to gain competitive advantage through market leadership and the knowledge and technical expertise to more quickly capitalize on upcoming technology advances.

When looking for high value wireless opportunities, the best place to start is enterprise applications. Despite the media's incessant and misplaced focus on consumer wireless applications, it's actually boring old enterprise applications that are providing concrete business benefits. While consumer applications may have allure and flash, they lack a persuasive value proposition today. Wireless enterprise applications may be stodgy in comparison, but they contribute real results.

For most companies, email access is the overwhelming impetus for investigating wireless technology. It's true that wireless email access offers obvious productivity gains, especially for traveling executives who need access to data to make quick decisions, but it isn't exactly a creative or breakthrough application of wireless technology. The greatest returns come from finding the right business problem first, then applying the appropriate wireless solution.

Enterprises of all sizes and types are making a compelling case for wireless today. What exactly are they doing with the technology? Excluding personal productivity-enhancing applications such as e-mail access, most wireless implementations seek to improve or extend existing mobile processes, or mobilize traditionally stationary ones. Giving doctors on rounds the ability to look up clinical information in point-of-care settings improves the healthcare delivery process. Giving customers the ability to check bank account balances, or make stock trades, from virtually any location effectively frees these processes from the ties that formerly bound them to desktop computers or ATM kiosks.

Rather than talk abstractly about the types of process improvements enabled by wireless technology, let's look at some of the actual benefits that companies are receiving from their wireless solutions. These benefits give interested companies an idea of the gains they can expect using wireless technology and are a starting point for more ambitious wireless endeavors.

Wireless technology is allowing companies to:

• Improve communications with mobile workers

Perhaps the most obvious and important benefit of wireless technology is its ability to improve communications between companies and their mobile workers. Communications improvements are two-way. Companies can use wireless technology to reach workers no matter where they roam and to forward information in a timely fashion. Workers can send information from the field to corporate sites or other employees. By extending the lines of communication, wireless technology eliminates or shortens "blackout" periods of unavailability, improves workers' ability to respond to dynamic situations and allows them to take advantage of down-time to catch up on messages. Wireless communications take the form of voice, e-mail and short text messages. Executives at office retailer, Staples, use wireless devices to send and receive e-mail from any site. Instead of phoning dispatchers at a call center, field technicians at Brinks Home Security use a wireless application to receive work orders and transmit job information directly from the field. Penske Logistics uses a wireless network to send route changes and directions back and forth between dispatch centers and fleet drivers.

• Close more sales

Wireless sales tools focus on improving the productivity and knowledge of salespeople, with the ultimate goal of pleasing the customer and closing sales. Salespeople use the tool to become better informed before visiting a customer, brushing up on account and product data. Visits are more productive, and salespeople are able to answer customer queries on the spot. The ability to check inventory, look up past orders, calculate prices and create proposals allows salespeople to close sales and submit orders during the call. This fast response locks in sales and prevents competitors from intervening. Companies like Atlantic Envelope, Brandow Automotive, Fiat Credit, Celanese Chemicals and Cybex rely on wireless sales applications to manage leads, research order history, place orders and check inventory.

• Reduce expensive site visits

Sending personnel to field locations to monitor equipment, collect data or make adjustments is costly. Dispatchers must schedule visits and resolve scheduling conflicts. Field visits involve unproductive travel time; a 10-minute onsite job may waste an hour or more in travel. Through a combination of telemetry equipment and wireless networks, companies are able to perform monitoring functions without sending workers into the field. Some solutions also allow companies to take corrective or responsive action remotely, with limited human intervention. Utility companies such as Florida Power & Light and Brunata-Metrona are using wireless solutions to "read" electrical and water meters remotely rather than sending workers out to record usage figures. Packaged Ice, a manufacturer of ice vending machines, installs wireless equipment on its machines to monitor a range of conditions, such as open doors or temperature imbalances, and alert storeowners before damages occur.

• Enhance field service productivity

Field service organizations are highly process-oriented. Delivering service typically involves a series of steps, from customer call to invoicing, and multiple parties, from dispatcher to billing clerk. Wireless technology can introduce improvements into the field service process by eliminating or combining steps, thereby increasing the productivity of the entire operation. Companies like Sears and Honeywell use wireless applications to give their field workers access to customer and equipment repair history, increasing the odds that repairs will be concluded in a single visit. By allowing field workers to calculate and present invoices, and collect payment on the spot, wireless applications shorten billing cycles and improve cash flow. Pepsi Bottling Group's wireless solution allows field workers to update and access parts inventory in real time to ensure that inventory levels are adequate and to match the right technician with the right parts to the right job. By relying on electronic work orders rather than paper ones, Pepsi Bottling has also eliminated manual processing of over 3 million forms per year.

• Keep tabs on expensive assets

Many valuable assets, from laboratory equipment to cargo and even expensive drugs, are movable or in transit, making it difficult for companies to account for and locate them at all times. These assets are subject to high levels of loss, theft and damage. Assets that are shipped far distances are often exposed to harsh environmental conditions that can cause harm. By using a combination of location and tracking technology (GPS for wide area coverage and local area networks for in-building or facility coverage) and sensors, tags or transceivers, companies are able to identify the whereabouts of capital assets and even monitor their condition remotely. American Airlines uses wireless applications to locate dollies and equipment on the airport tarmac. Express Trak LLC safeguards the condition of produce aboard its refrigerated railroad cars by monitoring temperatures, power fluctuations and fuel levels and making remote adjustments. Georgia Pacific uses wireless sensors to track and check the condition of reusable containers used to deliver fruit and perishables to grocery stores.

• Make customer interactions faster and more convenient

Across all industries, companies are experimenting with wireless applications to improve the quality of customer interactions. Airlines like Northwest and United send alerts of flight or gate changes to passenger's wireless devices. Similarly, financial institutions from Fidelity Investments to China Merchants Bank, interact wirelessly with customers to let them make stock trades, check account balances and shift funds. Companies like Avis, Hertz and the Venetian Hotel are bringing check-in and check-out to the customer, performing transactions anywhere on the premises and avoiding long lines and waits. Progressive Insurance equips claims adjusters with mobile and wireless data to expedite claims processing right at accident sites.

• Improve the quality and reliability of complex, "on the spot" decisions

Many mobile workers have to make complex decisions on the spot with less than full information. They do not have the luxury of access to complete background information, and the amount of relevant information needed to make a sound decision is beyond the recall of even the brightest individual. Wireless applications can connect these workers with the information they need to improve the quality and reliability of decisions. Doctors using UpToDate have full access to clinical information to research questions and validate diagnoses while attending to patients. Police organizations across the country, including the Illinois State Police, rely on wireless access to criminal justice data and applications to perform background checks, look up warrants and complete reports right from their patrol cars. Southwest Gas wirelessly transmits updated maps overnight to trucks parked in the company lot so that field workers will always have access to up-to-date information.

• Enhance inventory control

Maintaining and tracking inventory, whether coming off the assembly line or residing in warehouses or trucks, is a high overhead activity. Errors are costly -- the wrong items shipped, restocking charges, dissatisfied customers. Through a combination of bar code generation and scanning and real-time wireless database updates, companies are able to tighten their control over inventory. Avon Products is able to print bar code information and affix it to merchandise coming off the assembly line by using wireless technology in its manufacturing operations. McKesson HBOC has improved inventory counts and control in its warehouses, resulting in more accurate shipments and fewer customer returns. JC Penney uses a wireless application to track in-store merchandise more accurately. Pepsi Bottling Group relies on a wireless application to maintain more accurate truck-based parts inventory. Penske Logistics tracks incoming and outgoing freight that passes through its cross docks, which serve as distribution hubs for its truck fleet, to ensure that the right freight is loaded onto correct truck.

While space limitations preclude mentioning all of the benefits of wireless solutions, there are several others that deserve attention. In brief, wireless technology can help the enterprise:

• Prevent high-cost errors

Wireless applications can help check for and avoid dangerous interactions or conditions. In the healthcare field, doctors can use wireless solutions to check for drug interactions and submit more accurate electronic (rather than illegible, handwritten) prescriptions to pharmacies.

• Improve cash flow

Enabling salespeople to submit orders wirelessly from the field speeds billing and collection cycles. Likewise, having field service technicians tabulate charges, issue invoices and collect payment gives companies quicker access to funds, results in a lower incidence of bad debt, and eliminates costly back-end process steps.

• Bypass expensive or inconvenient wiring

Local area wireless networks allow companies to avoid the expense, inconvenience and distraction of wiring and re-wiring physical premises. In some environments, such as "clean" production lines or manufacturing floors, the presence of wires may even be a hazard. At UPS distribution centers, workers scan and track packages wirelessly rather than risk snagging cables in moving equipment.

• Create new products and services

By artfully exploiting wireless technology, companies are able to create entirely new products and services, resulting in increased revenues. Progressive Insurance is piloting a new auto insurance program in which policy premiums are calculated based on distances driven, a service enabled by wireless tracking technology.

• Exchange information faster and more reliably

Rather than using paper forms to gather field data, and then manually re-keying the information at headquarters, organizations can perform "one-stop" data collection in the field. Wireless applications allow field personnel to electronically capture and forward data, resulting in speedier access and more accurate information. Building inspectors in Miami Dade County, Florida, generate and submit reports from the field, allowing contractors access to inspection results in hours rather than days.

• Improve safety of workers and populations

Wireless location and monitoring systems not only keep tabs on tangible assets, they can track workers in hazardous or remote locations, and the spread of dangerous fires or diseases. Utilities companies such as Northeast Utilities, equip repair vehicles with GPS transceivers to track the whereabouts of workers in distant locations. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection uses wireless devices to track the spread of the West Nile Virus throughout the state. Similarly, firefighters in the Western US use geographic information software and GPS-enabled wireless devices to digitally map fires, perform damage assessments, and send data back to the command center to make tactical firefighting decisions under intense time pressure.

Companies have two choices. They can wring their hands and concentrate on what is going wrong in the IT industry and the economy in general, or they can look at what is going right and try to capitalize on it. As every business knows, it is foolhardy to simply stand still, waiting to see what will happen next. Wireless technology is making great strides, and is bringing concrete, valuable benefits to its adopters. Companies that get on board now will be able to ride the momentum of an improving economy and outdistance their more timid competitors. Companies that wait risk being bypassed.

1. Giusto, Randy, Kevin Burden, Raymond L. Boggs, Merle Sandler, Travis Glasson, and Stephen D. Drake. U.S. Mobile Worker Population, Forecast and Analysis, 2002-2006. International Data Corporation, June 2002.