May 9, 2001 Going Mobile
By Richard Karpinski
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IBM prides itself on being a step ahead of the e-business curve--especially when it comes to using Web-based technology and strategies to drive and transform its own business operations.
The company was one of the first large companies to deploy a robust, corporate-wide intranet. It was an early mover to Web sales--selling not only PCs but higher-end servers via the Internet. It aggressively moved its procurement online, and it launched some of the world's most ambitious internal e-marketplaces, several of which today serve as the backbone of the public high-tech exchange e2open.com.
Indeed, IBM has become very good at incubating new technologies and e-business strategies internally, before later rolling them out to their customer base.
Up next on IBM's plate: wireless e-business. It's focus is not just rolling out cell phones and wireless modems to its workforce but mounting a corporate-wide wireless infrastructure effort fronted by a division-by-division applications plan, starting with its increasingly mobile sales force.
We spoke with Christopher Bernard, IBM's wireless strategist for sales and distribution, who is helping to put new wireless devices and apps into the hands of its sales staff.
It's a strategy many of IBM's large enterprise customers may soon be following as well.
Wireless Apps
IBM's 26,000-strong sales force--backed by a substantial tech support staff--prides itself on its consultative selling. Whether moving big servers, databases or--more typically--some combination of hardware, software and services, IBM's sales pros faces long-lead times (100 days or more) and deals that require a good degree of hand-holding.
For the past five years or so, the company's sales force has been buffeted by two strong, but contradictory trends, says IBM's Bernard.
On the one hand, IBM has been pushing more of its sales-people out into the field, away from their desks and out to customer sites. On the other, IBM staffers are increasingly reliant on Internet-based information--email and Web information, certainly, but also increasingly instant messaging as well--to do their jobs.
The problem, of course, is that mobile workers are disconnected from vital information sources, often--such as when they are trying to close a sale--when they need them the most.
Sales forces typically fall into two camps: order takers and long-lead sellers. Order takers--think about vendors serving grocery stores, for instance, or a FedEx delivery man--have long worked with handheld devices (once called "bricks", now likely to be a Palm- or CE-based device). And they're also increasingly tapping wireless links.
Long-lead sellers have been slower to move to handhelds and wireless devices--mainly because the apps and information they need aren't as easily accessed via wireless links. But deployed correctly, wireless technology can make a big difference for a consultative sales force as well, says IBM's Bernard.
"Think of a critical situation: a customer calls up and says his data center is falling down around them," says Bernard. "If a sales person walks in right then to sell them an upgrade, they might want to know ahead of time there's a problem."
Last year, Bernard led a series of surveys of more than 250 IBM staffers, all in customer-facing positions. "We asked them, 'what are you using today?' and also, 'if we gave you anytime anywhere access, how would that assist you in your job?'"
Not surprisingly, most people asked for standard calendaring and email, Bernard says. So those became early priorities. On top of those basics, initial apps included wireless access to internal phone/email directories, access to instant messaging (via a wireless gateway to Lotus SameTime) and the ability to receive email alerts, for instance, when a specific customer sent a message.
More ambitiously, sales people were given wireless access to a customer reference database. "So, say you're in front of a customer and you want to sell AIX, the sales person can pull up who else has an installed solution, by industry and geography, and have it faxed or emailed immediately," Bernard says.
The new apps were rolled out to 1100 IBM sales people worldwide in early April.
"Our sales people will see more and more information at their fingertips," says Bernard. "If we get the right info at their fingertips that means they'll be able to sell more effectively."
Already, IBM teams are brainstorming the next set of wireless apps, including access to order status, announcement letters and expense accounts (already being piloted in Japan). All of this builds up to deployment of wireless access to the company's Siebel-based sales force automation platform, slated for next year.
When that happens, says Bernard, wireless will not only benefit mobile workers but also business analysts and sales managers back in the office who will have more immediate visibility into what's selling--and what's not--live from the field.
Devices and Middleware
Just like on the desktop, useful applications are they key to mobile computing deployments. But device and middleware considerations are paramount as well.
IBM selected three national carriers in the U.S.--Sprint, Nextel and AT&T--and specified a variety of phones and handheld devices (including IBM-branded WorkPad Palm and Blackberry RIM devices). It went through a similar process in Europe and Asia.
The goal was to give users choice--with some limits, says Bernard. "Our thinking was that if we build our middleware properly [not only application infrastructure but security as well] then we can let users make, within reason, their own device choices."
The middleware infrastructure--not surprisingly--is based on IBM's Websphere application and Domino email servers.
Supporting all of Bernard's wireless work for IBM sales is a corporate-wide effort--coming out of the CIO's office via its Business Transformation team--to define a global wireless architecture that all IBM divisions can work with. That technology platform, using IBM technologies, can support 2500 users today, but will scale up soon.
In addition, IBM is creating a company-wide set of wireless application standards and best practices to ensure that "anybody can create a wireless Web site within IBM, publicize it and it's available to everybody," says Bernard.
Some of IBM's wireless application efforts will be formal programs, such as Bernard's sales-staff roll-out. In a similar vein, IBM's intranet team--which today supports about half a million visits per day--is planning a major wireless roll-out later this year. But the published architecture will also enable ad hoc wireless Web apps.
It's a strategy that IBM pioneered on its corporate intranet: set baseline standards but let individual units--or even individuals--innovate and build their own Web sites and applications. "If we can enable people, they're going to do great stuff with wireless," Bernard says.
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