Calling on corporates

A large business process outsourcing (BPO) firm in Noida was faced with a unique situation due to its security policy that bars employees from bringing camera phones into the office premises. The Chief Information Officer of this BPO outfit was in a spot because there are hardly any phones in the market which do not have an in-built camera. He approached BlackBerry Inc. with the problem and they were able to offer a solution whereby the IT administration of the company could control the camera application on the employees' devices for a specific period of time. By tweaking the BlackBerry Enterprise Server's IT policy, the BPO administrators were able to shut down the camera on the handset given to each employee between 9 AM and 6 PM.

Like all traffic police units in the country, Gurgaon marshals were having a tough time controlling traffic disruption, especially on the Delhi-Jaipur highway. In August, Nokia offered a traffic management solution whereby nearly 200 traffic police personnel, stationed at different locations in the city, were given a Nokia E5 each inbuilt with a special software. This software allowed them to capture photo evidence of traffic violations including a snap of the vehicle , its license plate and the driver's mugshot. They could then tag it with a time stamp and upload it on the server to register a permanent record of the violation. The police were able to retrieve these photographs at a later stage and use them as evidence to penalise offenders, thus eliminating instances of offenders getting away.

Corporate requirements

These are just two examples of how smartphone makers including Samsung, Nokia and Research In Motion are targeting enterprise and Government agencies with customised applications and solutions in a bid to sell more devices. “We have seen a five-fold increase in enquiries from corporate on how phones can improve productivity. At present about 7-8 per cent of any corporate workforce is given phones by the employers. We seethis increasing as more and more corporates replace laptops with smartphones,” says Suresh Vedula, Director, Enterprise Mobility, Nokia India.

Another example of how mobile devices are enabling companies to improve productivity is the OnMobile partnership with Nokia. OnMobile employees, especially its engineers, spend a lot of time away from the office. To enable employees to respond quicker to customer needs, OnMobile implemented Mail for Exchange for Nokia smartphones utilising Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.

“With the Nokia solution, employees save around three hours of travel time every day. The time that earlier would have been wasted sitting in traffic is now being spent with clients or getting home at a reasonable hour. It's a massive change,” says Hemanth Thorvath, Administration and Facilities, OnMobile Global Limited. The company has witnessed an increase of over 20 per cent in customer project completion within target time and reduction in the company's travel expenses by over 30 per cent.

All this has meant more device sales for handset makers. Research from Canalys shows that the overall enterprise smartphone market in India stood at 13,30,055 units in FY 10-11, registering an average growth of 19.05 per cent quarter on quarter.Phone makers are now building on this momentum by going beyond just email and basic office applications.

Research In Motion, for instance, is working with over 21,000 developers in the country to dish out applications specifically for verticals like healthcare, banking, hospitality and manufacturing. “Increasingly, corporates in India want more from mobile phones than just email. We have clients using BlackBerry phones with productivity tools that allow their employees to submit leave application requests or claim travel reimbursements directly from their phones. In another instance an oil rigging company wanted live updates on sea tides on their devices so that they could operate their ships accordingly,” says Sunil Lalvani, Enterprise Sales Director, India, Research In Motion. The Canadian handset maker is currently in talks with large hospital chains in the country to offer a solution that will enable doctors to check MRI scan images of patients on their phones.

Samsung India is seeing tablets becoming a part of enterprise mobility solutions. The Korean major has already executed a sales force automation project for FMCG major Hindustan Unilever. “Samsung has created a developer eco-system in India, wherein Indian developers are being encouraged to create apps customised for the Indian market. Medical applications, working with insurance companies… these are some of the other projects on the tab that the company is involved in,” says Ranjit Yadav, Country Head, IT & Mobile, Samsung India.

One of the challenges phone makers are facing is the existence of a multiple device interface in an organisation because employees bring their personal mobile phones to work as well. To tide over this issue, companies like RIM are offering a solution that divides the device into office and personal profiles wherein the employee can continue to use social networking and chat services but at the same time the CTO has complete control over the official sectors of the device.

Luring SMEs

It's not just the large corporates which are being wooed byhandset makers. They are also targeting the SME segment with a different set of tools and applications. Nokia has formed a two pronged strategy to get a larger share of the corporate mobility market. On one hand it targets big corporates in partnership with Microsoft and IBM and on the other it makes enterprise solutions available on low-end phones with the Nokia Tej portfolio for SMEs. Nokia Tej is a supply chain management tool based on the SMS platform.

“Most SMEs cannot afford to give their employees devices worth Rs 20,000. Our Nokia Tej solution works on phones that are priced below Rs 4,000,” says Vedula.

While RIM does not have phones that are as cheap, it offers a facility to SMEs whereby they need to pay a one-time fixed licence fee for using BlackBerry services instead of a recurring charge. “We also have hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Services which we will soon launch in India using the cloud based architecture,” says Lalwani.

COMMENT NOW