In the second of a two part extract from the book Connected Workforce, Andy Mulholland, Global Chief Technology Officer, Capgemini and Mal Postings, Global Lead for Mobility and RFID Solutions, Capgemini argue that mobility must bring business and technology together in a collaborative approach. Building on examples from a wide range of industries, they show how, at this evolutionary phase of new-technology adoption, niche operations can have a stranglehold in key areas.
So, what are the real benefits you get from mobility? The first is obviously the ability to work remotely. We all understand that.
Next, you have real-time information sharing, which ties in with traditional areas of knowledge management. Out of 900 top US executives, 56 per cent cited remote access to critical information as being of major strategic importance to their business (Larstan Business Reports/Cap Gemini 2004). Imagine a future where more contextual, real-time data can, with the right software, be visualised more effectively and in real time. Rather than wait for the end of the quarter to get your balance sheet, check the P&L, asset count, utilisation and cash flow, you’ll have a group of departments, each offering and consuming services and operating with their own minute-to-minute reporting structure
Graphic equaliser
The performance view of the business of the future can be imagined as a graphic equaliser, showing service success and asset utilisation on a near real-time basis. Here you will have the option to manage the attached SLAs dynamically to reflect the current business objectives. Your quarterly management meetings no longer have to make dubious assumptions about performance until the next quarterly report: instead, you can focus on the overall health of your business, confident that you will always have your finger on its pulse. You’ll be able to make better decisions, quicker. Here you will be in tune with the rhythm of your business.
The third area is context-aware processes and, especially, location-based services. This is where the real growth is going to be and we’re starting to see a hint of its potential already. For example, we’re working on the bid for the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, devising security systems that will use location-awareness for security. Whether you’re in the Olympic Village or arriving at an airport, you can have real-time access to information on the nearest restaurant, the nearest ticket office and so on. It can all be automatically provisioned onto the mobile device based on where you are and linked to authorisation privileges.
Another example of our own: we operate a special training and education ‘university’ close to Paris, which we frequently rent out for external board meetings and corporate training. We considered having a space there that we could call the ‘mobile demo room’, where visitors could check out the mobility services we offer, but that would have been a bit ‘old school’. Instead, we are integrating mobile services into the running of the whole division.
Visitors will get a Nokia Communicator on arrival which, together with pervasive WiFi coverage, provides not only all the data they need — here’s your timetable, here’s where you need to go and so forth — but does so in a real-time and location-aware manner. You may, for example, have a special meal requirement, in which case you’ll find yourself receiving it without being asked. And the tutors have found it helps enormously: instead of marshalling their trainees in a single room, they can disperse them throughout the various libraries and support centres, where they can get the resources they require, yet the tutor can still communicate with and manage them. From a personal point of view, it also means that trainees can find each other easily. On arrival they can quickly link up with colleagues: a solution, in fact, that we’re now promoting to hotel chains.
More pervasive initiatives
These initiatives are going to become more and more pervasive. A doctor is doing his rounds in the hospital. His mobile device downloads all relevant information for each patient in turn as he approaches their bedside. The nurse beside him also has access to this information but presented in a manner appropriate to her work function. This is currently done over IP networks, not GSM (although it could be used on wide-area networks) using access points and triangulation to fix the device location.
Meanwhile, back in surgery, another doctor is meeting a new patient with a particular condition. New research on treatment for this condition is coming out almost every day. Doctors simply do not have the time to track this data and, even if they did, they could not manage their time effectively because they have no means of knowing what conditions they may be faced with tomorrow, let alone next week. But using a push model, relevant drug therapy information can be delivered to the doctor on demand, in real time.
Innovations like these are going to change the way we do business. At the moment, knowledge is seen as a separate repository, disconnected from the business process. What you need to do is embed the knowledge within the business process: as the doctor moves from surgery to ward to bedside, his information device navigates down through different levels of data and presents them to him appropriately.
This is an excellent example of mobility at work; and, it’s significant because it’s a device-to-device process at heart. This model is going to drive a great deal of innovation and business change in the near future. For instance, enterprise-to-device applications, like an airline company remotely updating a PDA with a change in flight schedule, will have a tremendous impact on business models in the mid-term. However, the technology for enterprise-to-device isn’t quite there yet. At the time of writing, it’s probably still two years out.
In the driving seat
For the time being, device-to-device is going to be firmly in the driver’s seat. RFIDs are taking intelligence right to the edge, right to the front line of the business process. For example, you currently gather information on the shop floor, filter it out and send it back to your ERP system where it will be subjected to, maybe, a twice-weekly logistics cycle for purchase pattern analysis prior to re-ordering. Intelligent devices are going to do away with all that and are also going to offer a wealth of other possibilities right at the edge (point-of-sale).
To take another example, imagine a haulage company that has all its assets out on the road 24/7. We’ve designed a system whereby each unit ‘calls in’ on a regular basis with its position and percentage utilisation. This information used to be processed by human controllers, matching client locations, loads and destinations with the current state of the network. Now we use agent-based technology to do the job, significantly reducing the client’s call centre staff while at the same time adding a 25 per cent improvement to the bottom line by maximising the utilisation. The agents work on goals that can be adjusted by the staff — to reduce delivery times, for example, at the expense of loading, or to use the minimum number of vehicles, laden to capacity, at the expense of delivery times.
A new model for business
Once you have device-to-device intelligent communication, then device-to-enterprise communication begins to deliver knowledge resources and enable process management in entirely new ways. This is just one emergent property of mobility that will force a shift in business process design: a move towards a service-oriented architecture state.
We’re accustomed to thinking of our businesses in linear fashion: you start here on the value chain, and you end here. A service-based architecture coupled with device-enabled technologies gives you a new way of looking at a business that may, in the future, be described as a 500-service-based company, a 50-service-based company, etc. Every company will define itself in terms of the services it provides.
Device-to-device communication is going to play a major role in this transformation. Take what’s happening today with RFID and the supply chain. You have a raw-materials supplier, a manufacturer, warehousing, and retailer with a logistics company managing the transport between them. Today, all of these organisations are having to declare their inventory and its location, pass it on to this company, then on to that one — and all the time they need to track-and-trace the product.
Now, take the pharmaceutical supply chain of the future. A vaccine is shipped from manufacturer to pharmacy. Each case or ‘palette’ is a device and an enormous amount of data is being generated real-time. There’s an obvious role here for a new service provider to aggregate that data and market it to others. For example, the logistics company, manufacturer or some third-party central company can now sell a new service to the pharmacy — the full track, trace and pedigree of the consignment. This is not just about streamlining. It’s actually creating a new business.
In spite of all these opportunities, mobility is unlikely to generate a commercial Big Bang. Even cellular services, which are often held up as an example of explosive growth, have been around for nearly 30 years. Mobility is creeping up on the enterprise environment but we’re not going to see the fundamental changes it can and will bring for at least two to three years from today.
This means that, frankly, the market is likely to be very confused in the short term. More corporations will become adopters or enterprise-wide users, but the proliferation of incremental solutions will lead to integration problems. As mentioned before, there’s a great deal of consolidation required in this market which is currently highly fragmented.
The real drivers of change, we believe, will be the automotive, healthcare and logistics sectors. Automotive, because that industry is already technically far advanced — something many people don’t realise and which is highly competitive. There are already initiatives that put vehicles at the centre of pervasive networks with integrated Device-to-Device, Enterprise-to-Device and Device-to-User solutions.
Healthcare is going to be significant, for the obvious reasons of scale and need, but there are significant added barriers for healthcare arising from its high political profile and the statutory constraints that go along with it. The logistics companies have a tremendous opportunity, because they touch on so many different companies and processes across the supply chain. This not only exposes them to a great deal of potential data, but also to a wide range of different client sectors.
Internet-like development
Looking ahead, the mobility market will develop in a similar way to the Internet, at least as far as adoption by corporations is concerned. We’ll see new applications, more pilots, but it will be two to three years before the benefits really begin to matter. The real changes will come when companies begin to appreciate the new service-driven architecture that can structure their business.
Today, a high percentage of the business activity is kept within the four walls of the company. Companies still need to grasp the fundamental redesign of their business model, which would allow them to consider delegating this business process or that service to a marketplace. They understand the marketplace outsourcing model, but only at a process level — call centres, product localisation and so forth — not at the service level that could change the way we do business entirely.
When that happens, be prepared for a true phase-shift in the way we conduct our business and personal lives.
