B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

Wireless Technologies 347
company's bottom line, as redundant processes and opportunities for
error are eliminated.
There are numerous everyday examples. A sales representative taking
a customer's order in the field could easily select a customer's account,
as well as model numbers, colors and other criteria desired, from preset
or contextual menus on a mobile device. The order could then be easily
transmitted wirelessly to the company's back-end servers where the
customer database resides and where it would automatically enter the
fulfillment process. Without mobile technology, the sales agent would
have a number of other more pedestrian options. The agent would
either need to wait until he reached a networked computer to input the
order or, alternately, he could fax or call in the order to the home office,
where another employee would have to enter it into the system. Each of
these more pedestrian alternatives unnecessarily complicates the ordering
process, slowing it down and decreasing its accuracy.
Communications in real-time
As alluded to earlier, mobile messaging and file transfer applications
permit individuals to send and receive files without the delay of first
finding a networked PC terminal. An example is Cendant, the company
that owns realty franchises Century 21, ERA and Coldwell Banker. This
forward-looking firm is in the process of equipping all of its agents
with two-way smart pagers capable of sending and receiving e-mail.
This will permit the agents, who may be out of the office for considerable
periods of time, to respond more quickly to customer inquiries. There
are other examples. At large law firms and investment banks like
Skadden Arps and Goldman Sachs, professionals receive RIM (Research
in Motion) Blackberry devices, affording them round-the-clock access
to e-mail.
12.3. Wireless Application Architecture
and Components
Figure 12.1 is an example of an existing technical architecture that
integrates a wired Website with a wireless access component.