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Planning a MIT Rollout
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Are you going to roll out a Mobile
Information Platform (MIP)?
Do you really thing you are just going to purchase the
gadgets, place them in the hands of your users and
go on holidays? Well, if you do it will be the longest ever
holiday, mate!
Mobile computing is a topic to be carefully planned.
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1. What PDA platform are you going to use?
Are you out for a WIN CE or a Palm OS platform or
will it be a special rare gadget?
2. Do you need colour or grey scale?
Some applications are pointless without colour and therefore consider this
before even purchasing gadgets.
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3. Do you have to run a WIN32
API system?
Then you'll be opting for a WIN CE compatible solution.
Big Players like Compaq and IBM have solutions fitting to
help you get real mobile.
4. Or is it a software that requires palm OS ?
If this is the case all your Win CE organizers are
useless. Palm OS can be found on IBM, HandSpring and other
licensed PDAs. 3Com offers Palms with wireless connections .
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5. How much memory is required for this?
Remember that on the PDA besides your application there will be many
hundreds of contacts, dates and notes. Some other additional useful
programs like CityTime or SplashPhoto.
Maybe you need 8 or 40MB RAM ?
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6. Can you use radio communications
in all locations?.
Be careful not to cause major fail outs by interference with
other highly sensitive systems. Fire Prevention technology
can be disturbed by radio interference coming from your mobile
gadgets.
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7. How do you go about supporting the PDAs?
You need service contracts, patches, updates, literature and in-house
support people. This costs money. You forgot them?
No money left? bad for you. Find a solution.
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8. Train and inform support before
rollout!
Please do me a favour:
Go and talk to you support manager and arrange training
sessions for the helpdesk team. Get them the gadgets before
your customers or users come to them. They are your back up. You'll
need them.
If you think you don't need your helpdesk involved then you
are a fool indeed! I tell you this from experience.
Any rollout you go about must be carefully planned and
prepared. Allways get all affected teams together and give
them a chance to contribute to your projects. This make things
easier for you.
Look at following table and you will see how important
it is not to under estimate the affect of a faulty rollout to PDAs.
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| % |
1998 |
1999 |
2001 |
2002 |
| 100 |
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| 90 |
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| 80 |
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| 70 |
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| 60 |
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| 50 |
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| 40 |
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| 30 |
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| 20 |
| 10 |
| 0 |
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9. Have you got brief instructions for your users?
You can tell them a lot but don't forget to give them
a handout to look up commands. The more you offer the fewer users
have to call support to get on to the next menu.
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I hope I have been able to give
you a first guide to a PDA rollout.
The so called Phase II will be the topic of the next article.
Christian Bartsch |
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