MobileFrame Blog » Integration

5 Things you should know about BEFORE you select a mobile software vendor

Patricia Oswalt — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:54:03 +0000

With more organizations looking for field service applications to streamline operations, it is no surprise that we have seen an increase in the number of mobile software vendors within the marketplace. Please take a few minutes to learn 5 things you should know before you select a mobile software vendor.

Proven – Be weary of solutions that have just been released and companies that have just opened their doors. Unfortunately many vendors have gone to market with solutions that have not been properly tested, documented and de-bugged. This can result in problems building your application, training your team, getting support and downtime out in the field.
Configuration – Make sure that the vendor’s solution can be configured by a member of your team on a moment’s notice without the need to write any code. It is also important that you have the means to deploy these changes automatically without the need to impact mobile workers, or uninstall and re-install the solution.

Track Record – Review your vendor’s successful project track record. Ask for references and schedule calls without the vendor being present. This will ensure you receive honest answers without the reference customer having to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings.
Integration – The majority of applications deployed today require integration into multiple back office business systems. Make sure that the solution provider you are considering provides an easy to use integration to mobilize your critical information.
Prove it – If you are evaluating mobile application development tools, platforms or custom application vendors, don’t sit through a power point presentation just talking about the solution. Make sure you get to see the solution working LIVE. If the company you are evaluating is offering an easy to use development environment, be leery of companies that need a sales engineer or developer to demo the product. This probably means that the product is difficult to use and even harder to develop with.

MobileFrame does not need sales engineers. All of our sales professionals are able to build their own custom applications and demo the complete environment including a live integration on every demo.

If you are interested in learning more about how MobileFrame can help your organization implement a field service application to streamline your operations please contact us today.

Does your service based business need access to lots of different data that changes constantly?

Patricia Oswalt — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:30:49 +0000

Many service based businesses that are utilizing old paper based methods to manage their daily tasks are also faced with the challenge of how to manage the unexpected. A great example of this is the daily dispatching of scheduled work orders. As a matter of routine, mobile workers travel into the office, pick up a pile of pre-printed work orders, then travel out into the field, and start working. BUT, what happens when someone calls in sick, needs help, is missing a part, a job is cancelled, or an emergency occurs?

On paper it’s pretty easy to explain what happens, everything in the office has to STOP while the dispatcher or service manager figures out how to untangle this mess. Usually this involves multiple phone calls to technicians to figure out job status, parts on hand, etc. Then after you find someone who can handle the additional work, how do you get them all of the needed information about the new job? They will likely need to know the customer name, address, contact information, description of the work needed, parts required, past history, etc.

It doesn’t take too long to realize that this process could definitely benefit from some improvement.

As you may be aware MobileFrame is the industry leader in Configurable Mobile Applications™ that bridge the information gap between the office and the field. We offer a library of pre-built mobile apps that can be used right out of the box. Because they are built using MobileFrame, they can also be easily changed to meet your requirements.

One of the main features that help our customers get information they need out into the field in real-time is our Dynamic Enterprise Data feature. This built in data deployment toolset makes it easy for business administrators to manage transactional data. When used in conjunction with our Integration Wizard, MobileFrame can easily pull information from any 3^rd party application and assemble it logically before it gets sent out into the field. This way companies are able to dynamically deploy the right data, to the right person, at the right time. If the company I mentioned above was using MobileFrame, work order re-assignments could be handled within our scheduling app and automatically notify mobile workers of the changes. This liberates office administrators from having to stop everything to manage daily emergencies.

Many customers have also noticed that Dynamic Enterprise Data also provides other benefits, such as:

Increased time to spend on higher value-added tasks
Automatic exception management
Reduced database size
Increased application performance

If your organization is stuck managing a growing pile of paperwork instead of your focusing on your customer, please take us up on our MobileFrame Mobility Challenge. Send us your existing forms and we will create a complete working mobile application and demo it to you live on our very first phone call.

MobileFrame Issued Patent for its 100% Code-Free Smart Database

Lonny Oswalt — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:08:35 +0000

Patented MobileFrame Configurable Mobile Application™ Platform Eliminates all Coding for Custom Mobile Applications including Smart Database Synchoronzation with Back-Office Enterprise Data.

MobileFrame announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued U.S. patent number 7,730,097 to MobileFrame for its unique 100% Code Free Smart Database that seamlessly synchronizes data between back-office enterprise systems and distributed mobile devices. MobileFrame’s enterprise mobility system eliminates custom programming through an intuitive, user friendly point-and-click desktop, enabling novice computer users to easily create and deploy sophisticated custom mobile applications. With secure Sarbanes-Oxley compliant instant messaging, integrated intelligent networking, prioritized smart synchronization, full remote device control, configuration and management, integrated GPS tracking and mapping, and remote software updates all built into one software platform, MobileFrame significantly streamlines mobile application development, deployment, and administration.

Application development tools are commonplace, but those tools require costly, time-consuming development to create business applications. Moreover, such business solutions tend to be inflexible, requiring expensive, custom programming when business processes change. As business processes evolve, MobileFrame’s software provides unparalleled flexibility to create new mobile applications of any degree of complexity, incorporating any mix of business processes. The software then seamlessly deploys the new applications to the field wirelessly “on-the-fly” to a mixed device environment.

MobileFrame’s award-winning software platform is an entirely self-contained mobility solution that provides full functionality out-of-the-box, with no custom programming, no third party mobile gateways, synchronization engines or SDK’s required. MobileFrame’s software allows users to capture photographs, voice notes, documents, templates, logos, sketches, digital signatures, bar code scans, magnetic strip read outs, RFID tags, advanced algorithmic functions, and attach them directly into their mobile applications. Applications are stored in a library so administrators can quickly make changes whenever operational requirements change, enabling on-the-spot deployment of a wide variety of mobile applications.

MobileFrame’s Smart Database technology ensures 100% data integrity between distributed mobile device databases and back office systems. Our patented 100% Code Free platform architecture allows any custom application and business process information to be accessed, controlled, combined and deployed to mobile devices without traditional, complex programming. Using MobileFrame’s patented Smart Database technology, enterprises can ensure critical data collected in the field on handheld devices is easily and reliably synchronized to their back–end systems without the worry of a single character of data loss. We do it every day in some of the most data intensive environments ever automated in field mobility.

Mobile Apps with full integration to Archibus now available

Patricia Oswalt — Tue, 11 May 2010 22:53:44 +0000

Are you interested in eliminating paper by collecting data on handheld devices? MobileFrame’s Archibus Mobile Management Solution allows organizations utilizing ARCHIBUS™ to bridge the gap between the office and the field by eliminating field based paper processes. We have a full suite of apps, including work order management, building operations, asset management and property management.

This out of the box solution will transform your business. Each application is configurable around your own requirements and better yet, there is no coding required. That means that you can have completely custom apps with no custom programming.

Feel free to watch our online demo at: http://www.mobileframe.com/Media/ArchibusDemo/Archibus%20Demo_skin.swf

During the Online Demo you will be able to review our Mobile Archibus Applications including integration back into Archibus.

You will be able to see how to:

Create, assign, and manage work
Craftsperson assignment, and time tracking
Parts Consumption
On Demand & PM Work
Archibus Integration

If you’d like to see a more detailed demo of the solution, please contact me today at:

Nick Hession | Phone: (208) 577-6179 | Email: Nhession@MobileFrame.com

Rapid Application Development Environments

Nick Hession — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:52:03 +0000

Rapid Application Development Environments

This topic always generates a lot of discussion, so I’m sure this time will be no different. First let’s start with the definition.

Rapid Application Development – refers to a type of software development methodology that involves techniques like iterative development and software prototyping. Essentially it is a development style that favors incremental development with constant feedback from the end user. This development process is repeated until the application has been perfected and meets the needs of the user. Many organizations have found that Rapid Application Development or RAD is a fantastic idea, but is requires advanced tools to make this approach a reality. This is where companies like MobileFrame come into the picture.

In order to “Rapidly Develop Applications” it becomes necessary to provide functionality out of the box, to make the development effort easier.

Some of the things MobileFrame does to make it easier to go mobile include:

Drag and Drop Screen Design – Design your mobile application logic once, and deploy to multiple different Operating Systems
Drag and Drop Print Designer – Create Print layouts in Minutes, and not weeks.
Printer Driver Bundling – Printer Drivers are bundled in, no need to pick a specific printer
Device Driver Auto Recognition – We are plug and play across a wide variety of different devices, and can support mixed device deployments, with no extra effort
User Administration – Users can authenticate against their current usernames / passwords, and IT can lock down the device to keep the network safe
Peripheral Integration – We Support RFID, GPS, Barcode (1d, 2d), Magnetic Stripe Scanning, Photo Capture, Photo Annotation, Drawing, Speech to Text, Digital Signature Capture, Printing, Barcode Printing, plus much more
Backend System Integration – Out of the box hooks into any ODBC or OLEDB compliant data source including (SQL, Oracle, DB2, SAP, Sybase, etc.)
Synchronization Management – Fail proof sync engine, with the ability to prioritize which networks you would like to sync over first
Mobile Device Management – Remote Device Management out in the field, with the ability to take administrative control
Enterprise Application Management – Update Applications, Client Software, and third party applications over the air, no need to collect the device from the field
Multiple Language Support – Create business logic once, deploy to any number of languages. No need to write and support a 2^nd code base
Plus many more.

The Mobile Software Development Market is full of companies that claim to have Rapid Application Development Environments, with easy to use development tools, which can be used to assist organizations to design, develop, and deploy mobile applications. And while I can’t speak for other companies that claim to have easy to use tool sets, I can tell you that at MobileFrame the average project from Design / Scope to Deployment is usually 3-4 weeks, and includes integrations with multiple different back-end systems. With this kind of turnaround many of our customers call our environment a Rapid Deployment toolset, instead of a Rapid Application Development Environment.

In fact, the system is so easy to use that all of our sales reps can show how to build custom mobile applications from scratch, make changes to the application on the fly per the user’s request, deploy them out to the device wirelessly and perform a live integration… all on the very first phone call with a prospect.

So the next time that you are investigating different tools to help you go mobile, don’t just think about Rapid Application Development, think about Rapid Deployment.

If you are interested in seeing how MobileFrame is able to create custom mobile applications with no custom programming required, contact us today.