Making Mobile Manageable

For Chris Consorte, CEO of Integrated Direct LLC, a lead-generation marketing firm based in Mineola, N.Y., this was the last straw. While out pitching his company's services to potential clients, he received an urgent phone call from an existing client who needed information from Chris in order to complete an important transaction. Fast.

"You're X miles away from the office and nowhere near a physical wall" to plug in your laptop and access your database, Consorte remembers. Not being able to provide for his client was very problematic. "Your client can lose trust that you can deliver anytime," he says.

To supply his current client with the critical information, Consorte walked away from attracting the new one. It was the fourth time Consorte had lost potential business this way, and it was to be his last. Consorte decided to go wireless. Using wireless technology, Consorte had a better chance of servicing current clients while on the road, by bringing his laptop with him and using the growing number of Wi-Fi hotspots across the country.

Consorte believes he is following a trend that is here to stay. As working from the car and home becomes more common, working remotely is becoming more accepted and less perceived as unprofessional, he says. Consorte predicts that mobile employees--and offices--will continue to become a "more accepted way to generate revenue."

Indeed, wireless technology is fast becoming an essential facet of doing business for both large and small companies. An August 2005 Forrester study revealed that more than half of all companies now employ the use of BlackBerries or some other wireless e-mail service, a greater increase than expected over 2004.

The adoption of wireless technology goes beyond e-mail today. It is utilized for almost all business tasks, ranging from sales and customer relations to logistics. Businesses in many industries have increased their general use of wireless technology, but companies in utilities and telecommunications, retail, media, and manufacturing appear to have become the earliest adopters. Employees in distributing and manufacturing companies, for example, now carry small electronic devices with them as they check inventory in warehouses, and keep track of the movement of products in real time, rather than recording data later at their desks. Quality control inspectors can instantly submit their reports as they walk through a facility. In retail, some stores are rid of long checkout lines because wireless devices allow cashiers to complete sales transactions from anywhere in the store.

Businesses of all types can benefit from incorporating wireless technologies into their operations. Here are some advantages to going wireless and how the technology can improve your business's productivity:

• Easy accessibility. Wireless Fidelity, or WiFi, hotspots are becoming easier to find. From coffee shops to public parks, hotspots are popping up everywhere. Additionally, new broadband services allow users to access the Internet through their cellular telephone entry points. In plain terms, this means that you can access your company information anywhere through the Internet, including from the shoulder of the highway. Although cellular telephone entry provides an Internet connection that is too slow and too inconsistent for regular use at this point, PricewaterhouseCoopers principal Joe Rizzo, based in New York, predicts that the ability to access a high-speed, constant Internet connection from anywhere is "right around the corner." One such technology, WiMAX, is gaining ground around the world as a viable way to stay connected across long distances. The standards-based wireless technology ensures compatibility between the hardware and applications developed by various vendors and providers to ensure constant connectivity.
  
  
• More productive company-wide and ad hoc meetings. "We can put so much more content into our agency-wide meetings because people aren't in line for each other's computers anymore," explains Marianne O'Connor, CEO of Sterling Communications, Inc., a high-technology public relations agency based in Los Gatos, Calif. With a wireless network, all of O'Connor's employees can now view each others' presentations on their own computers, rather than crowding around a particular workstation. The time required to set up meetings is also reduced, since employees do not need to upload their information onto any specific computer, in order to present it to their colleagues. This is particularly useful for companies with mobile employees and multiple offices. All employees can now take part in company-wide meetings on the fly, and see the same information from their computers, no matter where they are.
  
  
• Growth and office reconfiguration. This is a valuable asset for any business whose employees often move from office to office. "A wireless network is much more convenient because our employees don't always sit in the same place," O'Connor says. Because no constraints are placed on office configuration due to wiring and Internet ports, the possibilities for internal arrangement are endless. For growing companies, CEOs can focus on growing their workforce with fewer logistical concerns using wireless networking.