The future prospects of the mobile Internet: How companies stay competitive
More than 150 experts dealt with the future prospects of mobile Internet applications in companies and public administrations at the SimoBIT annual conference in Berlin in 2008 under the motto "Mobile Internet - How the world of work is changing". 12 project groups presented future-oriented solutions for the markets of tomorrow in the areas of healthcare, mechanical engineering, public administration as well as craft and trade.
In his opening speech, Jochen Homann, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, explained: "In order to maintain the competitiveness of companies and locations in Germany, it is important that the Internet is also used to mobilize business processes and jobs. With SimoBIT we are providing impetus and orientation for the accelerated development and widespread use of secure and powerful corporate mobile ICT solutions.”
Robert Keller, Director Business Services at the technology manufacturer Bizerba www.bizerba.de presented the service information system (SIS) at the congress: "If service orders arise in our control station, the operations manager sorts them according to the criteria of the technician's qualification, time schedule and availability. He then sends the data via GPRS mobile communications to the appropriate employee's pocket PC. While the technician is still on duty, the operations manager can call up the status of the order and thus plan further orders nearby". The system also automatically records the spare parts used, so that the employee's vehicle can be restocked overnight. “Before we introduced SIS, every service report was written by hand. With the introduction, the administration for entering and billing the service reports was reduced by 50 percent,” Keller continues.
According to Homann, the close cooperation between ICT providers and users in the project groups funded until 2011 is a decisive success factor: "It shows that, in addition to what is technically feasible, acceptance and security of the solutions are also important in order to open up new growth areas to be able to Especially in difficult times, it is important to identify new market opportunities in order to make the right investments for the future."
The projects funded by SimoBIT were able to qualify successfully in a technology competition. The project budget, including the contribution from the industrial partners involved, is around 60 million euros. The federal government's share of funding is around 28 million euros. The funding measure is managed by a consortium led by WIK Consult www.wik.org (Scientific Institute for Infrastructure and Communication Services) on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology www.bmwi.de scientifically supported. The first results of the accompanying research make it clear that cross-company business models in particular are very promising. Only they allow the necessary continuous optimization of business processes across all stages of the value chain. It is about a complex change that extends far into company organizations and working environments. For example, as part of SimoBIT, solutions are being developed and tested that enable the electrical trade to tap into the important market potential of large construction sites. In this example, an ICT-based mobile system solution, in which several small, medium-sized companies (SMEs) can join together to form a kind of virtual "large" company, creates new competitive opportunities for SMEs.
Source: Berlin [ Bizerba ]
