Simple, practical paves the way for wireless success

Practical wireless applications that leverage simple form factors and appeal to a broad set of users will likely foster the early success of wireless as a mainstream business tool.

In a move that may help set a high-profile enterprise example, General Motors Fleet and Commercial Operations will announce this week plans to offer its commercial fleet customers a wireless service to manage field force operations.

In a deal with wireless carrier Nextel and GearWorks, a Minneapolis-based software company that sells and hosts its etrace field force application, GM will be the first of the automotive giants to support in-vehicle wireless technology, also known as telematics, as a mainstream business product.

The GearWorks etrace xt software is a Java applet that resides on the Nextel i58sr phone, which comes with built-in GPS technology. The software can be updated over the Nextel iDEN network.

Hosted by GearWorks, dispatchers and managers will be able to access the Mission Control server component for status reports, location of drivers, maps for directions, two-way communications between drivers and headquarters, dispatching new jobs, and tracking the entire fleet. The service will give a company more visibility into its field force operations, according to Scott Hull, vice president of marketing at GearWorks.

The software also has a reporting component in order to measure employee productivity.

For the wireless industry, adding GM's imprimatur marks a turning point that will help legitimize wireless as a practical business tool.

"This crosses the chasm from vertical market segments," said David Hayden, president of MobileWeek, a research firm based in Palo Alto, Calif.

The etrace xt wireless solution will be marketed to nontech-savvy buyers such as plumbers and electricians looking to reduce what one GM executive called "windshield time."

"Imagine you are a plumber and you work for a company, and on average you do four jobs a day. If we are able to give you a Nextel phone and etrace, and that allows you to pick up one more job per day, that's a 25 percent per day increase in your business," said Tim Cavanaugh, product manager at GM in Detroit.

Hayden said that it is no longer possible to ignore the ROI that wireless brings to the table, especially in fleet management. For the auto industry itself it represents a continuing trend of manufacturers looking for partnerships with high-tech firms to increase their competitive edge by offering nontraditional options to its customers.

"Our business is selling cars and trucks, and if we can incrementally increase it by giving our commercial customers something that they can't get anywhere else, that's what we want," Cavanaugh said.

GM's decision to partner with Reston, Va.-based Nextel and use its handset rather than partner with a handheld manufacturer is also significant. For wireless to appeal to the broad horizontal business market, it must offer devices and software that are easy for nontechnical employees to use, according to Hayden.

GM will offer the service as an option with its fleet sales and will subsidize the cost of the Nextel phone and service for the first year of use. The service is available this week.