BlackBerry Application Helps Access The Best Business Intelligence From The Field

Why an Out-of-the-box Solution with BlackBerry Smartphones?

GE built on their existing deployment of the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution with Flowfinity Actions Enterprise Edition – an application for BlackBerry smartphones that allows companies to build versatile data forms without any expert programming skills. More than 150 GE Money sales people use Flowfinity Actions on their BlackBerry smartphones in the United States and Canada.

GE Money noticed they lowered costs when they moved from their custom solution to an out-of-the-box approach. "Flowfinity Actions is a boxed solution that comes ready for you to build and use, but it has a customized feel," says DeMarco. "We saved at least 25% of costs by going this route versus what we paid when we had a customized solution that only supported a single form."

They also gained a mobile solution that did not require a lot of IT intervention to make changes. When a particular sales team wants to adapt a form, the team's power user can respond and publish the new form to the BlackBerry smartphone within an hour. The updates to the form are automatically delivered over-the-air to each team members' BlackBerry smartphone. Because Flowfinity Actions leverages the push capabilities of the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution users don't have to do anything to receive the new form, it is simply delivered to their devices and is available, in its updated format, the next time they open the form.

"The flexibility of this BlackBerry solution is a real team pleaser," says Tom Kelly, SFE project manager who led the implementation. "It gives the sales leaders more input and control over helping their teams in the field," says Kelly. "And because the Flowfinity Actions forms are so easy to update on the BlackBerry smartphones, almost anyone can do it, so I don't always have to be the one making the changes."

BlackBerry smartphones have also proven themselves over the six years they've been used by GE Money. Push email, the ability to receive messages without requesting them, has been a bonus to busy sales people on the run.

"With the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution and Flowfinity Actions, we are now much more responsive to our retail partners," says Kelly. "When people were on the road before, they didn't check their email until they got to their hotel at night. Now they're answered on-the-spot so we're able to follow up with our customers much faster."