Results of a recent 2009 hospitality industry survey by Motorola found that the importance of mobility in the industry is rising, with 82% of its deceision makers reporting an increased importance of mobility within their industry.

The push for competitive differentiation was cited as a key mobility driver, with over 60% of decision makers agreeing that their company gained a competitive advantage through mobile and wireless technologies.

Its key advantages included heightened customer satisfaction, increased per-person average and improved inventory accuracy and visibility, where over 43% reported 34.9% average increase in customer satisfaction and 27% increase in per-person average.

“Mobility is viewed as the future enabler of growth,” said Frank Riso, senior director, Motorola Industry Solutions Group. “When compared to a representative set of emerging technologies, 53% of respondents felt that wireless and reservations would provide the greatest impact tho their organisation within the next five year,” Riso added at a media briefing at Motorola Technology's office in Petaling Jaya recently.

According to retail Information System (RIS) News – Retail technology Study of April, 2009, respondents identified the key retail strategies over the next 18 months as – To improve customer service or experience – 78%,  reduce store-level costs – 62%, improve workforce productivity or efficiency – 55%, improve IT network security – 42%, to use technology to reduce costs – 35%, to improve store-level inventory visibility – 32%, and to reduce incidences of being out of stock – 31%.

The key retail technology updates over the next 18 months are to upgrade their mobile computers/scanners – 34%, to implement voice solutions – 32%, to update their in-store servers – 30%, to install kiosks – 27%, and to implement digital signage or displays – 17%.

“Retailers tend to call mobile computers 'scanners,' when they are in fact imagers – ie cameras - which can take a picture of one- or two-dimensional bar code and decode it, whilst scanners use a laser to scan only one-dimensional bar codes,”  explained Riso.

Actual cases

The key retail applications over the next 18 months are price optimisation – 54%, price markdown – 49%, inventory management – 41%, replenishment – 40%, assortment planning – 32% and space planning – 24%.

Price optimisation is the highest price which the market will bear, whilst space planning is how to layout items on shelves.

Wireless access points, especially WiFi are essential for the efficiency and competitiveness of businesses, and the productivity of their nomadic workforces who can log in to their corporate network from wherever they are in the world.

“However, the proliferation of wireless networks in offices and in public places also poses security risks for organisations in terms of increased vulnerability to malicious hackers, identity theft, the leakage of confidential corporate or customer information and so on,” said Ronald van Kleunen, Motorola, Enterprise Mobility Solutions principal solutions consultant and business development manager in Kuala Lumpur on 8 July.

“Wireless breaches have resulted in the theft of tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers, Gartner predicts the average cost per data breach as US$300 each, Network World estimates the average to be worth US$6.6 million and the average customer turnover after a breach is 3.6%,” he added.

An enterprise network with wired and wireless access points can be compromised in several ways from behind the internal network firewall protecting it from attacks from Internet side.

BiteMark has come up with some rather innovative additions to its Proximate brand of Bluetooth advertising and marketing solutions since we last met them in November last year.

The company recently conducted an innovative 20-day guerilla marketing campaign in different parts of the Klang Valley to sign up new customers for  CIMB Bank.

Called the CIMB Dream Drive Campaign, it had four promoters called Proxinomads, each with a backpack containing the company's Proxibeamer Bluetooth content transmitter and an LED screen on a pole sticking out of the bag and above their heads.

They travelled around to public places such as bus stops, sidewalks, shopping malls and so on to tell members of the public about CIMB Bank and to sign them up for an account, and they certainly attracted the public's attention.

Despite the ongoing economic slowdown, wireless technologies, networks and business opportunities continue to evolve at a good pace, according to Andrew Solutions, the CommScope Inc division which provides end-to-end products and systems for wireless communication networks.

As wireless operators worldwide look towards higher speed 3G data networks such as HSPA+ and next generation technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX, they are faced with three critical challenges – namely:-

How to reduce costs while increasing network coverage, how to incorporate environmentally friendly solutions into the network and how to deploy LTE and WiMAX the right way, the first time.

Andrew offered these solution in a single Join The Evolution package at the recent CommunicAsia2009 exhibition in Singapore in June.

The current tough economic scenario has made Oracle's CRM On Demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) or “cloud computing” based customer relationship management (CRM) solution a very attractive option for enterprises, according to Sathya Prasad Rai, Oracle senior director for CRM On Demand, Asia.

“That's because CRM On Demand requires no upfront investment, can be implemented in two to three weeks and lets customers reap its business benefits within a short time,” said Prasad in Kuala Lumpur recently.

Also over the past few years, Oracle has come up with enterprise-class social CRM applications which draw upon the key success features of social networking sites such as Facebook, Linkedin and others and has applied them to CRM On demand to make it much more user friendly, relevant and and useful to sales staff in terms of their ability to collaborate online with colleagues and in communicating with customers.

Malaysia’s future as an IT hub relies on developing a pool of highly skilled professionals, as  networkers are demanding increasingly sophisticated professional services and a rapidly increasing number of Malaysian networking engineers are now being qualified.

According to Juniper Networks, this is driven by current investment in Malaysia's national next generation network (NGN) and this will have long term benefits in terms of the transfer of knowledge from international experts to locally-based staff, to enable them essentially to acquire the skills to design, deploy, maintain and optimise a national NGN and the number of skilled networkers is expected to grow from 50 now to over 200 when the project ends in about 19 months.

This knowledge transfer will also have a benefit on Juniper partner companies in Malaysia - which moves into  the enterprise space – with 572 engineers certified in 2008, up from 166 in 2007: leading to growing awareness of the ramp-up and payoff benefits of professional consulting and advanced services; with returns on investment valued more highly in a dynamic network environment and in these tight economic times.

“From 2007 to 2009, the Juniper Services project lifecycle went from planning to implementation and operation and in the services background pulls together people, pricesses and tools to provide a service called J-Care Technical Services which reduces customers' costs,” said Maytry Thianesysavanh, Juniper director for Services Business, Asia-Pacific.

Many companies, hospitals, utilities, postal, delivery, field sales & service, law enforcement and emergency service bodies rely on mobile workforces operating in the field.

“Worldwide there are 319 million mobile workers in manufacturing, 282 million in retail & wholesale, 186 million in supply chain, 185 million in field service & sales, 133 million in government, 73 million in healthcare -- the fastest growing segment -- and 18 million in energy and utilities,” said Janet Schijins, Motorola Enterprise Mobility Solutions vice president, Worldwide Channels.

With so many workers being out in the field, it’s crucial that they be able to remain in contact with their organisations’ information and communication systems to be productive.

KUALA LUMPUR, 26 November, 2008: Five billion people will be connected in 2015, with most applications on the Internet, broadband everywhere and a multitude of business models, according to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).

In such a scenario, one person can have multiple devices, subscribe to multiple services and operators will need to keep track of all the different identities, services, activities, rights and privileges, interests, likes, dislikes call and purchase histories, credit, balance, billing, location, presence and time zone of each subscriber on their network.

Even today, a typical operator has instances where the account activities of just one of its subscribers are stored in 20 different databases, so successful operators must consolidate all that information to have an overall view of each subscribers, so it can create new service opportunities for each subscriber.

A joint survey by the Telenor Research & Innovation Centre Asia Pacific (TRICAP) in Cyberjaya and research firm Synovate found Malaysian youths to be tech-savvy users of mobile phones and digital communities.

“That research shows that the mobile phone is used to obtain instant updates on important happenings and hence, deemed to be the most versatile and important portable device by all respondents, regardless of location, age and gender,” said Jens Olav Bjørnson, managing director, TRICAP