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Sales Reps, Truckers Go Wireless
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Business New Haven
11/27/2000
By: BNH
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NEW HAVEN - If your company has staff in the field and you want to streamline the way you keep in touch with them or process their orders, consider putting the answer in their hands.
Literally.
Clients of MyPeople Networks Inc. (www.MyPeople.net) are finding that wireless hand-held communications devices are good for more than just talk or Internet access. For instance, they're allowing sales reps to deliver real-time customer orders directly to their company's order-processing system. Need a contract on the spot? No problem - just attach a printer to the wireless wonder.
Key information can flow the other way, too, such as in a wireless-dispatch system being used by a short-haul trucking firm whose specialty is quick deliveries.
“We're providing solutions for communicating data between any company's main office and its field staff,” explains John Astarita, co-founder of MyPeople Networks (see BNH, November 13) and head of new business development. Partner Leo Samson specializes in the technology side of the business they founded last January.
Both are former Johnson & Johnson engineers who researched a number of technology business ideas before latching onto the wireless niche and locating in downtown New Haven. To date, they've developed applications for wireless sales ordering, insurance appraisals, dispatch systems, and wireless interfaces with Web sites.
Essentially, the system works like this: People in the field use devices such as a web-enabled PDA (personal digital assistant, e.g. the Palm VII), a WAP phone (a phone that can tap into a Web site and transmit and receive data), or messaging pagers. This field data goes to MyPeople's Web server, which collects and processes the information and then shares it with other company employees and corporate systems.
MyPeople has also developed software components, or proxy applications, to ensure secure communications and to translate the myriad of computer languages used by disparate devices and systems. This eliminates the need for multiple file formats or programming languages, Astarita explains, and also opens the door for Web sites to communicate with wireless platforms.
One of MyPeople's initial clients markets products to hair salons using a team of about 50 field reps. Prior to going wireless, that firm's reps would manually fill out paper order forms at the salons, and later fax those orders to the main office. That evening, the company's customer service staff would collect the faxes and begin the ordering process.
Hitting the “on” button to today, the reps now write orders on hand-held wireless devices that immediately transmit orders directly to the company's processing system. This eliminates paperwork, faxes and personnel costs. The wireless devices also simplify things for the reps, Astarita adds, by listing company products by categories or brands. “Reps can just note the quantities being ordered,” he explains. Product names can also be entered.
“This makes the sales rep more efficient and reduces errors and costs,” Astarita explains.
A downside to wireless communications, of course, is what happens when reps travel outside the signal-carrier's range. For that problem, Astarita advises clients to choose a carrier offering the best coverage in their sales areas. Even so, data will remain stored in a device until the rep returns to the carrier's signal range, and then transmitted to the home office.
MyPeople has partnership agreements with hardware and mobile service providers. Clients are billed a licensing fee per device plus monthly server-access fees, which vary depending on volume.
“We're starting to make business more efficient with this technology,” says Astarita, who adds that he and Samson targeted New Haven as their operations base because of the region's growing business potential.
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