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Mario Armstrong takes our product for a test drive with a new company to demonstrate how it can improve business efficiency
Our App reviewed by Mario Armstrong – Digital lifestyle expert for CNN and CBS
March 1, 2013
AT&T Press Release at the Mobile World Congress 2013 identifies our app as key contributor to growth of smartphones, tablets and related subscriber sales
February 27, 2013
Read the full press release on AT&T’s Web site here.
AT&T Serving Business Customers of All Sizes with Mobile Solutions
Advanced Mobility Solutions Experiences Record Growth in 2012
Dallas, Texas, February 26, 2013
AT&T* continues to deliver and implement mobile solutions for business and organizations domestically and internationally with the Advanced Mobility Solutions organization experiencing strong growth and customer traction.
AT&T saw 17% growth in smartphone sales and 139% growth in tablet sales to business customers from the end of Q4 2011 to the end of Q4 2012. With more businesses purchasing connected devices, businesses are also in turn reaping the benefits of mobile applications to empower their employees on the go.
“Instead of purchasing standalone applications, companies are looking for help in developing a mobile strategy, spanning mobile device management, application creation, bring-your-own-device solutions and security,” said Chris Hill, Senior Vice President, Advanced Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions. “As of the end of 2012, more than 54,000 of AT&T business customers are using mobile solutions that go beyond devices and network services.”
“The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Mobility Services, Q1 2013” report, indicated AT&T in the Leader category noting, ‘AT&T has strong end-to-end mobility services offerings, especially for buyers in healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, retail and consumer packaged goods, public sector, travel, and hospitality. As a telecommunications provider, buyers will benefit from being able to get bundled services that stretch into device and network management[1]’.”
MDM Customer Momentum
AT&T has also experienced strong traction with its mobile device management solutions (MDM), with a 140% year over year increase in MDM deals in 2012 compared with 2011. AT&T delivers carrier-agnostic solutions for multiple device operating systems spanning mobile applications, mobile device management and mobile workspace management.
The City of Redlands Police Department located about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, California, uses AT&T MobileIron VSP (Virtual Smartphone Platform) to manage and deploy voice and data services for their mobile devices. The Department wanted to streamline communications to the field while reducing costs.
“There is no way to administer hundreds of smartphones and tablets for the department without using a management platform,” said Travis Taniguchi, Criminologist for the City of Redlands Police Department. “The AT&T MobileIron VSP platform allows us to control access to our virtual private network, deploy the correct applications, and manage system updates. We have been able to significantly increase our efficiency – tasks that previously were done at headquarters can now be completed in the field, saving hours or even days of delay.”
Avantair, an air travel company headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, introduced tablet computers equipped with ProntoForms™ from AT&T for on-board document access and data entry. Utilizing ProntoForms, the company quickly created dozens of electronic forms for pilots to use when they are on the ground. To help manage its data in a highly-secure fashion, Avantair chose MobileIron VSP from AT&T as its mobile IT platform. The tablets connect to their back-end systems, giving near real-time two-way transmission of flight information and operating updates. The solution cuts out wasted time and bulky paper piles, and it enhances the security of data while improving the invoicing workflow by weeks.
In a recent Current Analysis Global Managed Mobility Services Report[2], AT&T was rated a “Leader”, citing AT&T’s ability to offer the most comprehensive portfolio of service, increased momentum and market maturity, and a well thought out vision and future service/product roadmap.
[1] “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Mobility Services, Q1 2013, Analysis Of 13 Global Leaders’ Capabilities And How They Stack Up”, Forrester Research, Inc., February 15, 2013
[2] 2013 Current Analysis Global Managed Mobility Services Report, January 2013
*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.
About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company and one of the most honored companies in the world. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and internationally. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s largest 4G network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. A leader in mobile Internet, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide of any U.S. carrier, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse® and AT&T |DIRECTV brands. The company’s suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world.
Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com/aboutus or follow our news on @ATT, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/att and YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/att.
© 2013 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. 4G not available everywhere. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Panasonic Toughpad and mobile business apps – Productivity on the go.
Our latest white paper. Special thanks to Antoine Jothy (creative) and Matthew Ross (co-author) – great team effort.
Excerpt from the White Paper – read the full white paper here
Introduction
We are in the midst of the age of business consumerization, where advancements in mobile technology and the proliferation of consumer applications have forever changed how businesses view their workflows and processes. It seems that there’s an App for everything these days, including for every type of in-the-field business purpose and requirement.
As more and more companies seek to take advantage of the game-changing mobile devices, cloud services and aforementioned business applications that steadily hit the marketplace, the needs and expectations of mobile workers continue to change. As the speed of business goes, so do the necessities of mobile business.
This consumerization of enterprise-supporting mobile technology is pushing big business into spaces it has never been. Gone are the days of in-house only technological solutions. Today’s CIO now has many packaged yet customized choices to consider, when adding to his/her solution arsenal.
Moreover, with the increased possibilities for today’s devices and applications in the field, mobile workers are daring to apply these new technologies to industries that were traditionally never before thought of as consumer device compatible. In other words, mobile devices are boldly going where they’ve never gone before.
However, as businesses began pushing the mobile technology envelope in the field, the need for a high-performing yet durable device arose. Since consumer type devices were never intended for the most rugged of job sites, certain limitations and fears crept in.
Thus, as the risk of devices breaking, falling or losing connectivity rises, the effectiveness and ROI of deployed consumer type devices and Apps falls. The more rugged the industry, the less viable and effective consumer type devices become.
Enter the Panasonic Toughpad tablet. Specifically designed and geared to excel in the most rugged, adverse job settings, the Toughpad was created with the most challenging enterprise, government and institution worker conditions in mind. The Toughpad is the most complete rugged mobile device ever built. It is single-handedly allowing companies in rugged industries to go mobile where they previously would not dare.
The combination of the ProntoForms application and platform, teamed with the Panasonic Toughpad tablet, is a prime example of the capability of today’s mobile technology for business. When you deploy a mobile form App that can collect data and real-time send it back to the office, on a user-friendly device that can operate under adverse conditions, the potential for becoming more efficient and productive in the field is almost limitless.
Simply put, mobile technology’s biggest contribution is in helping companies to go paperless and to digitize workflows and processes.
Excerpt from the White Paper – read the full white here
White Paper: Panasonic Toughpad
February 26, 2013
Top Five Mobility Lessons Learned In 2012 For CIOs
December 31, 2012
Introduction to my article published in Forbes – December 30, 2012. Read the full article here
Written by Mark Scott, CEO of Northern Pixels, a mobile app business consulting firm.
1. Embrace BYOD and BYOA innovation
Enterprise CIOs everywhere continue to promote companywide mobile solutions to simplify and streamline processes. However, these projects frequently experience long delays, budget overruns, and reduced features and functionality compared to the initial scope. Often, this results in employees losing confidence, and in many cases, taking control of their own professional destiny.
Passionate employees are bringing their own devices and apps to work to be more productive. There are valuable lessons to be learned from the BYOD (bring your own device) and BYOA (bring your own app) phenomena. Even managers of workgroups under the IT radar are mobilizing teams with non-sanctioned apps. These ground-up, almost black ops solutions, have quickly become crucial work tools that are transforming enterprise processes.
While old-school CIOs stamp out these employee-driven innovations to protect their own top-down mobility strategy, the savvy ones are beginning to realize that there are valuable lessons to be learned from these creative employee solutions. Frequently, these solutions are more effective, less costly, and most importantly, are already being deployed and successfully adopted.
2. It’s not custom app versus packaged app – it’s both
The utopian (and costly) idea that the enterprise should custom build all of its mobile apps, has now been acknowledged as outdated. Custom building solutions is undeniably here to stay; but for very select and unique business requirements. CIOs now realize that a growing number of packaged but customizable business apps can meet multiple requirements of an enterprise, and for a fraction of the cost.
Moreover, deploying a packaged solution can be done swiftly and with minimal risk, as it has already been market tested by other enterprises. This provides the CIO a more powerful credibility platform to deliver wider mobile enterprise solutions.
3. RIM and the Mayans were both wrong – migrating to iOS and Android didn’t result in the end of the world
Once upon a time, the shift by the enterprise from Blackberry to iOS and Android, was considered by many IT apocalyptic doomsayers as reckless, suggesting the invariable result to be compromised security of corporate data.
Fast forward to 2013 and the world is still here. Consequently, any CIO still preaching to executive committees and board members that there is no safe alternative to BlackBerry for enterprise, is likely to experience a shorter tenure than the already limited 4.5 year CIO average.
4. Tablets – Moses was right; we must all respect them
Tablets are progressively being used in more and more business functions across the enterprise. Employees in the sales and customer care roles are experiencing the strongest growth for tablet use. Tablets are also being rapidly deployed with field services employees when larger screens are required for inspections and reports. IDC reported 27.8M global tablet unit shipments in Q3 of 2012, up almost 50% over Q3 2011. Samsung showed sizable 325% global growth of tablet sales in Q3 2012 over the same period last year, with 5.1M units shipped.
In November, Gartner stated; “Tablets will be the key accelerator to mobility. Gartner estimates that in 2012 purchases of tablets by businesses will reach 13 million units and will more than triple by 2016, to reach 53 million units.”
5. Big data is getting even bigger – with mobilized employees
Read the full article here
HVACR Business News Reviews our App – Top 5 mobility and cloud solutions for field service professionals
December 4, 2012
Read the full article here
Go Mobile: Get rid of paper with electronic, mobile forms.
Guy Clermont Jr. of Guy Clermont Heating & Plumbing estimated the cost of printing forms, duplicate data entry back at the office and wasted fuel for unnecessary trips back to the office for truck inventory was costing him around $2,000 a year per field technician, with five people in the field. He decided to try a paperless system and looked at ProntoForms, a mobile-based business management solution for HVAC contractors.
“I knew this was a tool that would help me meet my goal of eliminating paper from my field teams,” Clermont said. “Equally important to saving time and money was organization. Paper forms were driving me crazy — too many lost forms to duplicate and manually re-enter back at the office, and many of them with missing information.”
Clermont said he considered using individual mobile apps for the various business forms his teams used, but he wanted something that he could customize and adjust to his business process and export data back to Quickbooks.
“We have developed a business system unique to us — our work orders and check lists are different than other companies — this has evolved from decades of experience. We get all of our forms on a smart phone — not someone else’s forms. Checklists, work orders and even taking pictures of a completed job or capturing a customer signature. This system makes us work smarter.”
The cost of ProntoForms is $19.95 a month per field worker. Compared to all the savings generated, it’s now one of the most effective service tools in the company’s toolbox.
Read the full article here
Texas Midland Reporter-Telegram – Our mobile app in action in Texas oilfields with BP, Shell and others
November 26, 2012
Smartphones or tablets can collect, upload oilfield data
Full story available here
Posted: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 5:45 pm
Paul Wiseman
As smart phones become smarter and tablet computers become more common, more and more oil patch companies are using these devices to speed the collection and transmittal of field data. With the right forms on board, these devices can be used to collect safety, inventory or other data, which can then be uploaded to a server.
ProntoForms, a system of mobile-based forms for a variety of industries including oil and gas, comes from Canadian firm TrueContext, which developed the idea about six years ago for use in Palm Pilots. Forms are now available for all mobile operating systems, according to Tim Moran, the company’s senior vice president of sales. Moran is based in Austin and the company has a number of clients in the Permian Basin.
TrueContext founder and president Alvaro Pombo had moved from Colombia to Ottawa to work in the oil industry many years ago. Having switched to working with Palm, Pombo in 2001 had the idea to create forms for use in that device, and left there to start TrueContext.
Originally, the company custom-designed Palm-based forms for large corporations and, said Moran, struggled for its first five to six years of existence. Then Pombo struck upon a way to mass-produce and market those forms to mid-size and smaller companies, which is when the idea took off. In the custom-design days, the company had approximately 100 very large clients. Today TrueContext boasts more than 2,000 clients in the U.S. and in various countries around the world, with communications giant AT&T as a reseller for the forms and a presence in India, Chile, Germany and elsewhere.
Today, the average oil and gas client company has 10-20 employees, but the big companies are still on board. Oxy, BP, Shell and others are on the client list.
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Full story available here
ZDNet takes a look at our mobile business app and highlights one customer’s productivity improvements
November 24, 2012
5 options for creating mobile forms
Summary: Smartphones and tablets are rewriting the rules for mobile data collection and field service dispatch. Here are five solutions for getting organizes paperlessly.
TrueContext Mobile Solutions – The Canadian developer of ProntoForms has a strategic relationship with AT&T, which is distributing its software – used by more than 1,800 business customers. The application helps organizations like Link Associates in Des Moines, Iowa, coordinate delivery dispatches. “ProntoForms has saved us up to 40 hours in labor a month,” said Jim Wilkie, fleet and facilities director for Link. That’s a lot of hours for a small business. The app links with a service that starts at $19.95 per month, per user for AT&T subscribers.
Our app used to survey Lynn University students in advance of final Presidential Debate
October 20, 2012
The third and final Presidential debate will be held on Monday October 22nd at Lynn University in Florida. AT&T sponsored an initiative at Lynn University to survey students on how mobile access to social media impacted their views of politics and the candidates for the 2012 Presidential Election. Our App was used on Samsung Galaxy Tabs for the survey.
Our latest white paper for CIOs developed on the topic of Mobility Enterprise Application Platforms – Packaged versus custom built
Special thanks to the research and writing team Steve Woodward, Matthew Ross and to the Creative Brand talents of Antoine Jothy
Excerpt from the White Paper – read the full white here
Introduction – The Great Debate
At present, one of the biggest technology debates within enterprises is how to best deploy mobile solutions into the field. Should these solutions be built and maintained in-house, or are pre-built, packaged mobile solutions the way to go?
Mobile solution capabilities for business continue to develop at a feverish rate. Seemingly growing by the month, device makers and the brands behind the major operating systems are arming mobile workers with more and more tools and access for smartphones and tablets. This has left enterprises scrambling with how best to maximize what their workforce can do in the field.
The challenge for every enterprise is clear – provide workers on the go with the very best and most efficient mobile tools possible. If not, almost certainly, for every enterprise thinking about deploying a mobile solution, there are competing firms contemplating the very same decisions.
However, it’s important to differentiate between the mobile solutions we’re considering. As mobility solutions continue their rap- id expansion across businesses, multiple unique requirements can be defined. While smaller businesses may require only one solution, sophisticated enterprises may require multiple unique, packaged and custom-built solutions, including mobile Apps for brand marketing and retention.
This white paper is focused on productivity solutions for businesses, and compares the buy versus build costs of a multi-platform, fully integrated mobile solution, for data shared and dispatched to enterprise field workers, and for data collected in the field and real-time shared with the office and other team members.
For CIOs and big business executives alike, the pros and cons of buying versus building must be heavily weighed. Pressure on CIOs is coming from below, with employees complaining of how much more productive they can be with their own smart device, and from above - boardroom expectations of a clear and deployed mobile strategy. For a multitude of reasons, speed of deployment in today’s competitive business environment is paramount – 18 to 24-month development and deployment projects can frequently outlast many team members, strategies and even the CIO altogether.
What compounds the challenge of the mobile strategy, and the ongoing debate of buy versus build, is the importance of interconnecting office data to the field and field data to the office. The mobile App cannot work alone; it must be connected to the office to maximize business productivity.
Invariably, at the end of the day, it will always come down to projected ROI – how much time and money is an enterprise investing and what kind of results will it yield?
Enlisting the help of an independent ICT expert with 20 years in the industry, we examine how packaged, customizable applications such as mobile forms solution ProntoForms, fare against similarly in-house built applications.
Steven Woodward is a leading international expert in ICT estimation and cloud computing governance. He has over 20 years experience in software estimation, benchmarking, valuation and governance. A Certified Function Point Specialist since 1994, and a Certified Software Quality Analyst since 1995, Woodward was asked to independently analyze buy versus build scenarios, involving ProntoForms and general industry examples.
In 2010, Woodward was elected as Director of International Software Measurement Analysis conferences and education, in conjunction with the International Function Point Users Group, custodians of the ISO/ IEC 20926 functional sizing standards. This standard is used to consistently quantify and categorize software functionality to establish realistic commitments, monitor progress and clarify support costs of software solutions.
Woodward is also a published author on effective project measurement and cloud computing measurement.
Read the full white here
Mobilizing Enterprise Workflows – Buy versus Build
October 19, 2012
What CIOs Need To Understand About Apple’s Passbook Service
October 8, 2012
Introduction to my article published in Forbes – October 8, 2012. Read the full article here
Written by Mark Scott, CEO of Northern Pixels, a mobile app business consulting firm.
The CIOs of the world’s leading banks and credit card companies have to be getting a little anxious about the direction of their mobile strategy as the stakes grow ever higher. Gartner’s tracking of mobile payments is expected to surpass $171 Billion this year and exceed $600 billion within four years. Meanwhile, Apple’s recent Passbook feature, a simple way to manage gift cards, coupons and tickets, hints at a looming “iWallet” mobile payment feature that could have considerable impact on shifting consumer payments market share.
With billions of dollars at stake, the mobile payment market today is still muddled with multiple players but no clear, undisputed leader. There are two approaches in play. One uses embedded hardware in the form of a near-field communications chip (NFC) within smartphones, which requires an NFC-enabled merchant device to handle the transaction. The other is an app-based cloud transaction approach. The recent release of the iPhone 5, without an NFC chip, and the launch of iOS 6 with the new Passbook feature are signaling Apple’s preference for the cloud approach.
Three specific things about Apple are fueling banker CIO anxiety: existing user base, integrated convenience and consumer influence. With a reported 400 million active iTunes account and 315+ million mobile devices, Apple has major home field advantage to position itself ahead of virtually any upcoming solutions. To provide context, the U.S. as a whole has an estimated 176 million credit cardholders. As banks and credit card companies struggle to develop an adoptable mobile solution, Apple continues to build a powerful user base day over day.
Ultimately Passbook is designed to enhance the ease of transactions – which all merchants and brands like – and it’s an obvious precursor to connecting mobile payments. Apple controls the hardware and the mobile OS, and now with Passbook, it provides brand app developers the ability to link their products to a centralized and easy management of gift cards, coupons and tickets. It’s strategic multi-step approach, and connecting multiple brands to its loyalty management infrastructure will make it easier to move to the next step of connecting them to the transaction system.
Read the full article here
