How To Find Your Niche In Wireless

That's what a significant number of companies are wondering about the wireless environment today. A plan might sound good on paper, but will the technology work when it's supposed to? How will a wireless world benefit my clients? Will my clients see a return on investment (ROI)? How will it help my clients' efficiency and bottom lines?

The ability to help clients answer those business-process and productivity questions puts them in a prime position to enhance their own businesses. Integrators such as CompuCom and Stellcom and vendors like IBM say they want to bring the wireless world to next-generation companies--like the ones that predicted having a Web site was the wave of the future.

"The pressure to go wireless is so huge," says J.P. Frenza, marketing director for IBM's Web Integrator Initiative. "A lot of companies were burned by their slowness to move to the Web, and they don't want to make that same mistake now with wireless."

Leaving For m-Camp
Seeing opportunities in wireless, IBM last year aligned with eight top integrators--Agency.com, AnswerThink, Luminant Worldwide, MarchFirst, Organic, Rare Medium, Razorfish and RGA--to share wireless resources, building labs at their companies so integrators could do business with select clients.

As a result, in November, IBM started offering three-day wireless workshops for Web integrators called m-Camps. "The focus of m-Camp was really for companies that build e-businesses," Frenza says. "These guys know how to get to the zoo, but they need the map to show them, 'You Are Here.' We have the map."

At m-Camp, partners learn specific protocols, how to architect a wireless solution, such as messaging, into an enterprise environment and how to weave voice into wireless solutions, Frenza says.

"It's not all pro-IBM technology, and not everything is on a Big Blue solution," he says. For example, IBM is partnering with Sun Microsystems to run IBM software on Sun's hardware, with the WebSphere Application Server installing on Solaris.

"Right now, you have a number of competing standards, protocols and devices," Frenza adds. "Will it be cell phones or PDAs, or will Bluetooth dominate? While all those standards are being sorted out, we're asking, 'Where is wireless in an enterprise sense, and how does it relate with commerce?'"

Determining A Game Plan
The biggest challenge for the enterprise is figuring out its wireless plan, says Dan Elliott, vice president of ConvergeMobile Business Solutions at CompuCom, whose full-service wireless offering includes consulting, deploying wireless technology, training and service.

"Last March, we started thinking about this whole mobile convergence type of requirement that the enterprise wants now," Elliott says. "I think it's as much about mobile as it is about wireless. Synchronization and mobility are two key areas when it comes to the enterprise."

CompuCom also plans to introduce a workshop similar to IBM's m-Camps.

"We'll spend a couple of days with the clients to educate them about what's going on in the market and go through case studies of what other clients in their particular businesses have been and are doing," Elliott says. "We'll work with them toward putting some priorities and thought behind where they want to go from a mobile perspective."

Meanwhile, at Stellcom, revenue is up, and executives say it's a sign of how serious companies are becoming about going wireless. Wireless Works is the company's predictive ROI model for eager, soon-to-be wireless clients. Stellcom also co-engineers the integration of software vendor Widcomm's Bluetooth technology for customers requiring a seamless personal area network (PAN) to LAN connectivity with PDAs, phones, laptops and other mobile devices.

"The CIOs and CTOs we're talking to are focused in 2001 on anything that adds to the productivity of the organization or provides a financial savings. They're not going to fund cool projects this year," says Bernhard Schroeder, CMO at Stellcom. "They're going to fund things that are going to have an ROI impact. And we're not seeing any decrease in spending from our perspective. Our revenue is up 20 percent in Q4, and we're forecasting another 20 percent growth on top of that revenue for Q1."

Patience Is a Virtue
Preparing a company for wireless is a challenge for the solution provider--especially for the company and its end users, adds Loring Spitler, Stellcom's development manager. Having patience during the transition is a mandatory prerequisite.

If the wireless initiative includes the entire technical spectrum--from moving the host data to a messaging interface, and then translating that messaging interface into small, manageable messages for the target mobile devices,the process can take six months to a year, Spitler says. "We generally tell customers they can have a prototype in a three- to four-month timeframe, but actual rollout will take a year," he adds.

Stellcom has been bombarded with inquiries about business process, Schroeder says.

"The killer app for wireless is going to be business process because that's where a company can eliminate steps and functions," Schroeder says. "Think about large repair and maintenance organizations. They are heavily paper-based, and they don't have to be."

On the Go
When delving into the wireless world:

1 Analyze the client's business case for going wireless to see where and how a solution fits within the company.

2 Encourage clients to attend strategy workshops and wireless "open houses" offered by vendors.

3 Utilize partnerships for best-of-breed solutions.

4 Present an ROI model (think 30 percent to 40 percent) for the client for specific wireless solutions.

5 Be patient. From pilot to rollout, wireless solutions take careful planning and time to implement.