Hansen & Sons inc. has a handful of administrative employees who input orders, employee hours and worksheets received from employees in the field. The company is involved in distribution, building, maintenance, and consultancy, but despite healthy growth, their bottom line is stagnating because the increase in revenue has put pressure on their administration and on their cash flow.

Automating manual work processes and eliminating printed forms are two areas that will pay off for Hansen & Sons in the long run. If users don't have access to the printed forms, however, then the ERP system must always be accessible. Paradoxically, this situation motivates companies to choose what many IT specialists would call an offline solution. In other words, they choose a solution where the data and work processes are stored locally with the user. This situation occurs because the capacity for communications and access (or, put another way, the capacity for bandwidth and coverage) has been limited up until now, and it will continue to be limited into the foreseeable future.

Mobile users are as active and on the go as ants at a picnic. So if you install software on a mobile computer, whether it is a laptop or a PDA, you should be aware of the fact that it will be a while before you can access and update the software. For this reason, many companies choose a system that allows you to change and adapt the mobile ERP solution on a server at company headquarters. The server itself then updates the relevant mobile computers the next time they are in contact with the company.

From a technical point of view, it is relatively simple to make information accessible to the mobile user. You choose which information from your business software program you want to make accessible, capture some screenshots in order to show the information, and then send a regular update of the information to the PDA and/or laptop. There are a few details that need to be worked through regarding the amount of data, but most software providers are on top of that situation. So, Hansen & Sons can basically choose information from all over their system without it costing them an arm and a leg.

When it comes to collecting information in the field and then updating the business management system, however, then we run into a technical limitation: you cannot just freely write into the database of a business management software system. In reality, systems that administrate structured information (time, money, and items, for example) are characterized by a lot of activity underneath the surface. Every time you move an item, register work time, or execute an order, you set off a chain reaction of activity in the back-end. If you try to address this fact by implementing database synchronization, it won't be long before the debits and credits do not balance correctly. That is precisely why most companies choose technologies and software which instead send transactions or documents to the business management software system – a sort of mini-EDI solution.

Transaction-based software offers a further advantage: the system expects to receive data in a certain format. The level of security will therefore be on a par with that which EDI partners experience. And most people would agree that that is quite a respectable level indeed.

The general recommendation to Hansen & Sons inc. is to get started, but to get started with the absolute minimum. Most company’s first business software system could not depreciate fixed assets or calculate the value of work in process, and similarly, there is no reason to jump into a mobile project with all the bells and whistles just yet. It is sufficient to focus on savings, efficiency improvements and other optimizations simply by automating manual processes.

You can no longer expect to get a discount in exchange for becoming a reference customer, and that, after all, is a sign that the technology and the software has matured. The only excuse to wait is that mobile computers will be less expensive next year. If you followed that argument, however, you would still be waiting to buy your first laptop, PDA or mobile phone.

For some time now, Hansen & Sons has been aware that a mobile ERP solution could benefit them.  Giving employees in the field the ability to access and enter information in the company's IT system could relieve the pressure felt in their company administration, and it could help reduce their overdraft as well. But how do they make sure that mobile ERP solution will pay off? Let’s look at the factors that ensure a successful IT investment.