Motorola mobilises its field marketing workforce

Issued by Global Research Partners for Enterprise Content & Wireless
Johannesburg, 02 Oct 2006

Enterprise Content & Wireless (ECW) today announced that Motorola, executing on its own cellular handsets, has exploited the leading-edge, device and operating software agnostic mobility tools and applications developed by KeyTools (Pty) Ltd, part of the ECW group.

This move enables its field marketing agents to better monitor, enhance and add value to the company`s activities, particularly in respect of its interaction with outlets across the country.

The cutting-edge solution creates a precise recording of every customer engagement experience through real-time capturing of customer profile information including photographs, staff details, comments, observations, product training needs of the customer, competitor observations and stock recording.

"With our exciting growth demands, we could not afford to continue as previously and needed an organisation that was responsive to our needs, and also host the eventual solution on our behalf," commented Tracy Lipworth, Sub-Saharan Africa Field Marketing Manager for Motorola and the driving force behind this vision.

The tool utilised for this purpose is a Motorola specific version of KeyCHARM, a powerful offline channel activity and customer contact solution that includes an embedded relational database that comes with a comprehensive Web-based back-end database management and reporting system. This potent, integrated solution was developed for Motorola by KeyTools using its mobile rapid application development toolset designed to be operated using any of its high tier 3G/GPRS mobile devices.

The solution enables the relevant Motorola agents to establish and maintain profiles for all outlets that include images and photographs etc, in addition to text information that can then be stored, compared and exploited as necessary. The relevant content can be downloaded as appropriate onto their mobile devices together with any requests for further content capture.

"We were astounded ourselves at the speed we developed KeyCHARM using our rapid application development toolkit, KeyPAD," added Willie de Jongh, Technical Director of KeyTools. "In the years I have been involved with cellular mobile software developments, I would never have believed it possible. Using KeyPAD we can now build even the most sophisticated and highly secure solutions, super fast and with the capability of the same software code running on top of any modern cellphone or PDA handset irrespective of the individual device operating system."

"The bottom line for us is that the application increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the field staff," concluded Lipworth. "We have rolled out in South Africa and intend deploying KeyCHARM throughout our African region by year-end. We see this as an ongoing project with new features and functionalities being developed as our organisational demands grow and technology evolves."

For further information, please contact Ray Dalgarno, ECW: telephone (011) 675 7193, fax (011) 675 4075, e-mail rayd@lavasystems.co.za.

Enterprise Content and Wireless (ECW)

ECW is the merged entity of Lava Systems Africa, Lava Systems Mobile (LSM) and KeyTools (Pty) Ltd.

The Lava Systems Africa (LSA) team originated in the late 1990s with the objective of becoming a premier supplier of enterprise systems based around knowledge management, document management, records management, image management, collaboration and workflow solutions. The emerging demands that were identified included government process re-engineering, supply chain co-ordination, customer relationship management, e-government and B2B processing. In support of these business aims, the technology platforms chosen had to enjoy a proven global track record and adhere to open Internet architecture standards and developments. LSA is a South African-based company dedicated to the sales, marketing, support and consultancy founded upon the Livelink product suite from Open Text, a product that the staff have been involved with since 1998. LSA user base embraces customers from both the private and public sector and includes organisations such as Bateman Projects Limited, Alexander Forbes, the Gauteng Provincial Government and the National Social Security Fund of Uganda.

KeyTools is that company which concentrates on the marketing, sales and support of the mobile software systems and business solutions and that also offers the capability of `hosting` such a business solution.

Lava Systems Mobile (LSM) is a company focusing on the development of mobile applications and tools; and was originally created in 2005. Later that year, it was absorbed with KeyTools, a well-established mobile applications software developer with international links.

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