White Paper: Durable Smart Devices For Mobile Field Forces: Selection And Evaluation Criteria

Companies continue to expand their mobile workforces, as increasingly capable and affordable technology becomes available in the form of high performance handheld devices connected to faster and more reliable wireless networks. Indeed, current handheld devices exhibit most of the capabilities and performance of a PC of only a few years ago, but in a highly portable form factor. With this rapid advance in device capabilities, application suppliers are no longer hindered from creating and supplying highly capable on-device solutions that extend the reach of corporate mission-critical applications. Better graphics and increased processing power and memory enable users to interact with task-oriented solutions easily, thereby increasing the user's productivity dramatically. And while basic communication functions still drive many users to handheld devices (e.g., email), we see a substantial increase in mission-critical back office applications and task-specific work solutions being deployed (e.g., CRM, ERP, SFA, dispatching, sales management). Mobile workers now spend as much as 25%-35% of their work day in the field nteracting with their portable handheld assistants.