Wireless Migration: Is It Better To Outsource?

Written by: Tim Wills, VP Of Marketing, Peak Technologies

A successful wireless technology migration path needs to be defined well before the implementation process begins. Companies should consider their expectations, resources, and limitations to determine the optimal plan. Organizations with internal staffs that are knowledgeable about technology migration and can defer daily responsibilities for a while might choose a fulfillment approach. In this scenario, the company simply requires a partner that can provide hardware. However, there may be potential complications of using internal people who may not have the specific knowledge, experience, and even certifications that a technology migration partner offers. There's danger of losing internal resources, also, through turnover, reassignment to other projects, or other distractions that can leave the project without expertise to drive it to completion. To prevent these possible downfalls, many companies turn to consultative partners for expertise on current best practices and knowledge of wireless systems.

KEY CRITERIA FOR CHOOSING A WIRELESS CONSULTANT
If you're considering using a solutions provider/consultant, it's important to do a background check and consider the following: 

- What are their comprehensive offerings? In addition to product questions, also consider support, maintenance, consulting, and professional and life cycle services.
- Do they offer project methodologies that have been benchmarked, documented, and proven with a quality metric (e.g. ISO, TQM [total quality management])? 
- Do they have functional, industry, and market certifications?
- What is their geographic reach? Does the partner offer broadly distributed resources to quickly respond to multisite requirements? 
- Does your potential partner provide a service agreement document describing the minimum performance criteria and remedial actions and penalties that will take effect if their product's performance falls below a promised standard? 
- Are their customers satisfied and can the solutions provider/consultant provide references and/or testimonials? 
- Will they still be in business when it's time for upgrades or even routine maintenance and support?

In addition, gathering the appropriate information about prospective partners and setting expectations up-front will eliminate questions, finger-pointing, and confusion in the long run. To ensure a smooth technology migration project and prevent unexpected problems, companies should be thorough in their preparation.With the wide range of products and solutions available, it is important to consider whether you want to choose a single vendor solution or a mixed environment. This decision will affect your spares pool, system costs, and support management costs.

It is also important to consider your future needs, such as whether you are going to incorporate applications, including RFID (radio frequency identification) or voice recognition, into your solution. Working with a technology migration partner can help build a scalable solution that will grow with future requirements and save time and money in adopting future applications.

DON'T NEGLECT POSTIMPLEMENTATION SERVICES, SUPPORT
When selecting a partner, companies should carefully consider the extent of support required after the initial implementation. There are three basic support options to consider — self-support, shared support, or outsourced support:

- Self-support is the best option if there is extensive knowledge within the end user's IT department.
- Some companies want to handle the tier-one level support, but need help with tier-two and tier-three IT issues. A shared support program would be best for this type of company.
- Outsourced support entails enlisting a knowledgeable partner to provide expertise on evolving technologies and ever-changing compliance requirements and security standards. The strategy to use your own resources may actually overextend in-house capabilities, especially when new technologies are encountered.

An outside solutions provider/systems integrator experienced with multiple vendors can provide invaluable expertise from consultation and analysis to implementation, service, and support. Many companies find that it's wise to choose a partner who understands the complexities of the ever-changing technology management environment. A proven partner offers knowledge about new technologies, industry best practices, and network and wireless interface protocol changes. These capabilities can mitigate the risk of wireless technology migration and provide long-term value for your AIDC (automatic identification and data collection) applications.

Tim can be reached at tim.wills@peaktech.com.