Going Mobile | Local firms adapt how they do business to keep pace with smart phone technology
When Kathleen Cooper, a Sturbridge real estate agent with JCKC Realty-Keller Williams, is showing houses to potential home buyers, she doesn’t just show them glossy pictures of homes in magazines.
She uses her Apple iPad.
Cooper creates a slideshow that includes photos, past sales she has completed, market statistics about the area and even customized notes for the buyer.
“It saves a lot of paper, plus it gets that ‘Wow’ effect,” Cooper said.
But figuring out how mobile devices and smart phones fit into a business isn’t just for high-tech firms. Smart phone sales are on track to outpace PC sales next year, which means nearly every industry will be impacted by the technology.
For some, like Cooper, a move toward mobile technology can create efficiencies. For others, it can be a struggle of how to keep up to date with the latest technological trends. Good or bad, the technology wave is here and businesses are adapting.
Digital Evolution
For Winston Grey, director of information technology for Consigli Construction Co. Inc. in Milford, investing in technology is not a choice, it’s a necessity.
The company has more than 200 business-owned BlackBerry smart phones that are distributed to each of the company’s project managers, project engineers, foremen and supervisors. Even more employees have laptop computers. Grey is hoping to soon start a pilot program to test out tablet computers, like the iPad.
“Everything we’re using has literally transformed the way we do business compared to five years ago,” he said.
BlackBerries and other smart phones, he said, have become “the norm” in the industry.
In construction, time is money and gadgets like smart phones and tablet computers allow workers to communicate with clients, architects and co-workers faster and easier.
“When you’re on a job site and something needs to be fixed, the owner and the architects are expecting answers now,” Grey said. “Issues need to be resolved as they appear and this technology helps us do that.”
For some companies, technology isn’t just changing operations, it is changing the business culture, said Matthew Stecker, president and CEO of LiveWire Mobile in Littleton. The company makes music and advertising programs for cell phones.
“A few years ago if you got an e-mail, it was acceptable to respond the next day,” he said. “It’s hard to justify that now. Everyone is getting everything on their phones.”
That, he said, can make employees feel like they are on call 24 hours a day.
“It can be stressful and can really blur that line between work and personal life,” he said.
Companies like LiveWire are also constantly working to stay on top of new technology advances, which can be difficult when new products are being released so frequently.
Just keeping up to date with new cell phones that are released and ensuring mobile websites and mobile phone programs work on the phone’s web browsing capabilities is a constant effort, Stecker said.
Creating Efficiencies
For other industries, smart phones and tablets can be life savers.
Girish Kumar Navani, president of eClinicalWorks in Westborough, a private electronic medical records company, said about 90 percent of the company’s clients are using the eCW software on wireless devices, such as a smart phone, tablet or laptop.
“The numbers are increasing at one of the fastest rates we’ve ever seen for people requesting to access medical records remotely from their phones,” he said. “The flexibility, the experience it gives you, it’s unmatched.”
Doctors, using the eCW software, can fill out prescriptions electronically on their phones without ever stepping into their office. Or, they can take a patient’s call and review medical records on their tablet while on vacation.
“It’s making an amazing change for the patients and the doctors,” Navani said.
Other business leaders are unsure about how technology will change their business model.
Gareth Charter, publisher for the Holden Landmark Corp., which publishes six weekly newspapers in Central Massachusetts, including WoMag, said there is a question of how newspapers and other media will fit in with an ever-changing world of technology.
“To me, it’s all about the content,” he said. “We have to be delivering local, compelling content that people can’t get anywhere else. If we can do that, then we will be the source of that information and we can make it available on multiple different platforms.”
Many media outlets have applications and programs for smart phones and tablets allowing readers to access their products. So, will digital editions replace the printed word?
“I still have a lot of confidence and faith that print is going to have a place in society,” Charter said. “No matter how much information I can access on my handheld, the experience of having a printed product in your hand is one that can’t be replaced.”
If owners are worried about how the decline of personal computers and the rise of smart phones and tablets will impact their business, Bob O’Donnell, a vice president and researcher for IDC in Framingham, has some reassuring news.
“We see most of these devices as being additives,” he said. “Smart phones aren’t replacing PCs, at least not any time soon.”
People who have smart phones, he said, usually also have a personal computer. For example, O’Donnell predicts that most of the 3 million consumers who have bought an Apple iPad already have a personal computer and in many cases a smart phone. The iPad likely will not replace those devices for consumers, but rather it will supplement them.
Still, there are millions of devices on the market, and O’Donnell said businesses have to think about ways to tap into the technology, either for their own operations or to service clients.
WBJ Web Partners
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