When investigating mobile software solutions every organization has to ask themselves the age old question: “Can I find something off the shelf to solve this problem?”

I invite you to consider the merits of evaluating an alternative approach before spending money on a solution.

FACT: Off the shelf mobile software solutions are developed by companies that identify some common problems in a specific market, then build a software solution that addresses some of those needs. This is also called a one size fits all approach.

PROBLEM: Here is where the problem lies; no two organizations even within a specific market operate in exactly the same way.  The associated business logic that has made your organization successful can’t be incorporated into a boxed solution intended to fit the masses.
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Expedited Packages has chosen MobileFrame to automate their Proof of Delivery processes.  Prior to adopting MobileFrame’s platform, Expedited Packages had 700 drivers using an outdated Palm application that lacked wireless capabilities and operated only in batch-mode.  They also had 200 people using a hosted application for which they had to pay the vendor for every change; often times, the vendor would refuse to make the requested changes unless it benefited their entire customer base! Expedited Packages recognized that it had become necessary to adopt a more robust mobility solution, one which wouldn’t hold them hostage to the vendor’s whims.  With MobileFrame, Expedited Packages will be able to utilize the latest mobility technologies to implement a full-featured POD mobile application that closely integrates with their existing dispatch software. Read the rest of this entry »

RFID or Radio Frequency Identification is a technology that involves the use of a tag that is applied or incorporated into a product or asset to help identify and track the item using Radio Waves. There are many different types of tags and associated readers available on the market today. It’s now common for organizations to not only look for ways to eliminate field based paper processes but to also think past bar-coding as well.

Here is a good example, you employ a team of 100+ Sales representatives that are in charge of doing inventory counts at customer locations (Think big box retailers) and the inventory needs to be 100% be accurate. The current solution involves the process of manually scanning 100′s if not 1000′s of products while at the customer’s site. No matter how diligent you are this can be a time consuming and error prone task. How do you solve the problem? Hire more sales people? Invest in better, faster scanners? Buy your sales reps memberships to the local gym so they can move faster? A great alternative would be to create an RFID based system. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last couple of weeks I have had multiple discussions with organizations that tried to go mobile, only they weren’t successful. (FYI – None of these organizations have ever been MobileFrame customers)  After hearing about all of the obstacles they tried to overcome, I realized that they all have a few problems in common.
Problems Encountered:

• Endless Professional Services Cycles (i.e. Development) – One company said that they have been trying to get their pilot started for the last year and a half. They’ve spent $100,000+ on Software and another $40,000+ on Hardware.  The hardware is still sitting in a corner collecting dust.
• Difficult to use Development Environments – Some of these groups purchased development environments that claimed to be easy to use. They weren’t. This naturally lead to issue #1 which is the need to pay for a lot of money for Professional Services. Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently reading the article “Make Mobile Printers Work for You” by Brian Albright featured in the November edition of Integrated Solutions Magazine, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  Essentially it was an article that was stressing the importance of planning your mobile solution with an emphasis on the need to plan for mobile printing, because it can take a long time to create.

The article did a good job of pointing out many of the limitations of mobile operating systems, including the lack of the ability to print out of the box, lack of bundled drivers, etc. While it is true that mobile printing isn’t native functionality to Windows CE, Windows Mobile, etc. It is native functionality inside of MobileFrame. In fact our customers don’t need to plan for the use of mobile printing; they can create new print layouts in minutes, and deploy them to field in seconds, all without the need to write a single line of code, or contact us for development. And, MobileFrame supports over 450 mobile printers out-of-the-box.

We’ve done the work to bundle print drivers, and allow users to easily create print layouts via our drag and drop GUI interface;  this eliminates the guesswork, and gives you the benefit of not having to worry about paying for someone to code a print layout.

If you would like to see a live demonstration of our capabilities, feel free to fill out this form, and we will schedule a time to chat.  Don’t forget to follow us on twitter http://www.twitter.com/MobileFrame

Every Organization looking to implement mobile technology is forced to make this same decision: Do I make my mobile application, or buy it?  There are several options to consider. Read the rest of this entry »

The mobile community is littered with companies who claim to be “configurable” with “no coding”, but most are just spinning a web of marketing hype with no real substance.  MobileFrame not only holds the patent on 100% Code Free Mobile Computing, but we practice what we preach day in and day out.  Our mantra, Custom Mobile Applications with No Custom Programming means exactly that. Read the rest of this entry »

Mobile Device Management or simply MDM is software that provides the ability to control your organizations’ mobile devices while out in the field.   This usually includes functionality like wiping a device’s database, remote application updates and even remote control.

Over the past several years I’ve witnessed many organizations travel down the same path, they focus almost 100% of their energies on incorporating mobile technology into their business, but fail to think about the full lifecycle of the project.  This kind of thinking is usually characterized by questions such as:

• What should phase 1 include?
• What should my workflow look like?
• What kinds of reports do we need?

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Here at MobileFrame we encounter many different types of organizations looking to reap the benefits of going mobile.  Traditionally these organizations are seeking to transform their current labor intensive, and error prone, paper based (work order / Inspection / Asset Tracking) system into an automated, error free, paperless environment.  Through our interactions with these clients we have been able to craft some important questions to ask as you begin evaluating different mobile technology software providers. Read the rest of this entry »