The annual Chicago Customer Relationship Management Conference and Expo was hosted last week by the Digital Consulting Institute, a US-based IT conference and tradeshow organisation.
One of the many panel discussions at the show focused on the latest trends in field force automation (FFA). Show founder, Tim Bajarin, said the FFA arena used to be highly vertical and specialised, but has now exploded onto the mainstream circuit because of developments in wireless and the Internet.
Jim O`Brien, manager of implementation services at wireless data solutions company, Nexterna, agreed. He added that wireless is not always the be all and end all that many believe it to be.
"The solution you finally choose will depend on the industry you are servicing." He pointed to healthcare as an example. Upon entering hospitals, technicians have to switch off their cellphones and other wireless devices because these could interfere with some of the hospital`s machines. "This is where the Internet can play a key role. The necessary information can be recorded onto the Internet via the hospital`s PC."
Jonathan Kissane, product manager of Viafone, an enterprise software company, added that voice commands, which can be recorded via a normal telephone, could also be used.
At this point, the issue of keyboards entered the discussion. The panel agreed that the keyboard would still be around for quite some time. Kissane said: "A voice recognition system in this instance is typically used by a user group, which specifies the exact set of commands for the system. As soon as you introduce the general population to that system, it will fail, because the computer does not understand the commands."
Peter Semmelhack, president and CEO of Antenna Software, a Web and wireless solutions provider, said that the key trend in FFA is content integration with software, where users can have the necessary information pushed out to them. He gave an example of what will happen in the next few years when a field service technician receives a call.
"The dispatcher puts the address into the system and the technician can immediately pull up the map of how to get to the call, pull up a traffic report, and see what machine is on the site - all via his wireless device with integrated software hooked up to the Web."
It does not end there, according to Semmelhack. "The technician can also pull up the schematics and do trouble-shooting directly on the manufacturer`s site."
He concluded: "In the past, we found that you only got out the information that you put into the system. Soon we will find that the data we put in can connect us to the exact information we need in that instance. I believe this trend will not only feature in the FFA arena but everywhere, from business to consumer usage."
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