“With HP hosting, mobility is delivered by Rogers to its customers as a utility — with the hardware, software application, network access and support services bundled in a way that is easy to buy, easy to use, and easy to support.” — Mansell Nelson, Vice President, Business Development, Rogers Business Solutions

For mobile workers — everyone from delivery drivers and field technicians to sales agents and inspectors — plugging into their employers’ IT processes has been a long unfulfilled promise. Instead, they spend the day working with paper forms.

Forms tell them where to go, what to do, and ultimately, document completion of their work. But dealing with paper causes problems. Manual transcription is timeconsuming and error-prone. When field staff receives incorrect or insufficient information on a form, customer service suffers. And inefficient routing of paperwork delays billings and sometimes causes erratic follow-up with customers.

Many large corporations have adopted ERP-based mobility solutions for such workers. But those solutions are typically cost-prohibitive, making them inaccessible to small and medium-sized businesses.

Mobility for small and medium-sized business
Now Rogers Communications Inc. of Canada has developed a comparable mobility solution for smaller businesses. It leverages the latest mobile and wireless technology to increase field staff productivity and lower costs, and is built on industry-leading solutions from HP, Microsoft and TrueContext. Rogers mFORMS™ is the first and only turnkey mobile workflow solution available in Canada, and elevates the value of Rogers’ service substantially above commodity mobile e-mail.

“Together with our business partners, we’ve created a simple, flexible, wireless solution that will help businesses dramatically improve customer service and enhance the productivity of their mobile workers. The Rogers mFORMS solution will help to level the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses and drive improved business results,” said Mansell Nelson, Vice President, Business Development, for Rogers Business Solutions.

The full service was just recently launched. Among pilot users, mFORMS has enabled field staff to increase productivity, reduce dispatching staff, and dramatically cut turnaround time for invoicing. The service is offered exclusively by Rogers, which is Canada’s largest wireless company, the only GSM carrier in Canada, and the country’s largest cable TV operator.

Plugging field staff into the office
Rogers’ mFORMS solution enables the right field staff to wirelessly receive and transmit electronic versions of their paper forms to and from a Windows Mobile®-based device, using the Rogers Wireless GPRS/EDGE nationwide data network. The system replaces most paper and voice-centric information exchanges with wireless data communications using an HP iPAQ Pocket PC phone edition as an electronic clipboard. Using the iPAQ Pocket PC, mobile workers can download assignments from their home offices, easily update sales or service order information while on the customer’s site, capture a customer signature as appropriate, and upload completed orders and other attachments when the assignment is finished.

mFORMS eliminates manual transcription, along with the errors that often result. It speeds information sharing in both directions to improve customer service. And it ensures prompt follow-up and billing. mFORMS supports signatures, photographs, sketches, printing, RFID, GPS and other customization to suit individual business needs. Multiple forms — from work orders and time sheets to expense reports — can also be deployed on a common mobile platform.

Partners play key role
The mFORMS service operates in the Windows Mobile environment, a flexible platform that enables the creation of easily customizable solutions. The Windows Mobile environment gives users a familiar Windows experience, integrates well with the Windows-based applications and data, and enables flexible, end-to-end solutions. For Rogers, Windows Mobile provides a reliable foundation on which to build its own in-the-field mobile solution.

The application technology underpinning mFORMS is provided by TrueContext. The TrueContext mExperience™ service platform enables the creation and deployment of secure, scalable, and easy-to-use mobile forms that extend traditional business processes to the field. The platform also supports content and device management and is available either as externally hosted services or as software deployed behind a business firewall. The technology has allowed Rogers to offer mFORMS as a robust mobility solution for small and medium-sized businesses, without the typical large initial outlay required by other solutions. Customers are instead billed a flat monthly user fee by Rogers.

HP hosting behind the solution
How is that possible? Rather than build the IT infrastructure to support mFORMS themselves, Rogers turned to HP for a completely hosted solution. “With HP hosting, mobility is delivered by Rogers to its customers as a utility — with the hardware, software application, network access and support services bundled in a way that is easy to buy, easy to use, and easy to support,” Nelson said.

The solution runs on HP ProLiant DL380 servers and an HP Modular Smart Array storage solution, monitored by HP OpenView software, in an HP data center. HP also provides help desk services to support users with the iPAQ Pocket PC and application software. Rogers pays for HP hosting and support services on a monthly per user basis — the same way Rogers is compensated by its customers.

Why HP?
Even before mFORMS, HP was a long-time Rogers supplier, with a substantial presence in the company’s in-house data center. But with mFORMS, Rogers was depending on HP for much more than simply hardware. HP also played a critical role in helping Rogers develop the mFORMS solution, including validation of the TrueContext application software and project management throughout the planning and launch.

“With the launch of any new service like this, you’re bound to run into challenges. That’s when the expertise that HP has from managing similar kinds of solutions around the world really became evident,” said Nelson. “They were able to bring that knowledge to bear and help us through the roadblocks. One of the strengths of a global company like HP is its ability to look around the world at what lessons were learned elsewhere.”

Another benefit of partnering with HP: speed to market. “Clearly, without HP we wouldn’t have gotten to market as quickly as we did,” said Nelson. “With HP hosting, we get a fully functioning data center at an affordable cost, managed by staff with unsurpassed expertise in the platforms being used. Having HP deliver the IT services eliminates risk. I don’t have to worry about whether the box runs; I can concentrate on getting this in front of customers. Our focus is on the network, the marketing and the billing.”

HP reputation reassures marketplace
Rogers has a history of launching new products and using outsourcing to make it possible. But mFORMS is one of the first times Rogers has leveraged a partner name to help market the service.

“When you say HP, people just know there’s great competence behind the solution. It’s tough enough selling a new concept; having a major brand associated with it gets the discussion flowing that much faster with customers,” Nelson said.

The availability of a turnkey HP help desk supplied another piece of the puzzle. “For the past several years, Rogers has been using the help desk function in Canada as a competitive differentiator. We’re known for excellent support,” Nelson said. “Having HP provide second level support for the device and application through their technology experts made good sense and enhanced the mFORMS offering.”

Positive initial feedback
Just three months into the launch, Rogers is busy educating both its own sales staff and potential customers about what mFORMS can do. But among pilot users, the feedback has been very positive.

Rogers’ initial business case was that, at $125 per user per month, the basic service would begin paying for itself in three to six months. But Nelson notes that many field service technicians bill out for over $100 an hour. So just one additional billable event per month per technician will pay for the service. And mFORMS is delivering much more than that.

One of the pilot user companies, for example, has virtually doubled the number of jobs completed per day by field staff (from 1.8 to 3.8), reduced its dispatching staff, and has improved its ability to meet strict Service Level Agreements.

Another pilot customer has cut the time to invoice a job from more than eight days to just one, saved its technicians eight trips per week to the office, and improved follow-up on sales leads.

“We’re helping our customers deliver a much higher degree of customer satisfaction, because service delivery is all about responsiveness,” Nelson said. “The challenge has always been, how do you push out information that employees need in the field, where they need it, and how do you get their information back into the systems that drive your business? For many small and medium-sized businesses, Rogers mFORMS finally provides a solution.”

	For more information on how working with HP can benefit you, contact your local HP sales representative, or visit us through the Internet at our world wide web address: http://www.hp.com