Happy New Year!

Posted on 4 January 2012 | No responses

From everyone at Codegate may we wish you and yours a healthy, happy and peaceful New Year.

If the pundits are to be believed 2012 will see the full effect of government cut backs, tax increases and higher commodity prices taking money away from the pockets of the consumer. At least inflation is predicted to slow from its current high of nearly 5% to nearer the Bank of England target of 2% within twelve months, giving the consumer a little respite. So how do you prepare your business for the worst?

Obviously it will be essential to minimise overheads without sacrificing efficiency, and to maximise the return on every GB£ invested, but how?

If some of your workforces are mobile, performing customer visits or maintaining plant ‘in the field’, or are employed in the supply chain, or in logistics, Codegate can help. Our unique software and hardware solutions enable our customers to beat the competition by:

• Minimising invoice disputes through open and transparent business transactions
• Avoid Service Level Agreement penalties by providing undisputable evidence of compliance
• Providing on-line transaction history and viewing of progress, minimising return visits
• Increase efficiency by reducing the employee’s administration overhead, allowing more visits per man/day
• Reduce mobile inventory by showing what stock is available and where
• Minimise employment costs through “where’s my nearest…” web portal view of staff availability
• Ensuring employee protection by including “lone worker” reporting concepts
• Minimising your corporate carbon footprint by integrating navigation and optimising routing instructions
• Providing evidence of corporate compliance with Health & Safety and Working Time Directives

As you can see this isn’t just about saving money, it’s about creating and maximising profit at a time when profit will be hard to come by. By enabling your staff to become “trusted experts” with their customers, loyalty is increased, making it more difficult for the “cheapest price” competitor to match your add value proposition. As a result, you win more competitive bids, increasing profits.

Imagine increasing your market share while your competitors contract, staying profitable while they make losses, expanding – against the trend. For sixteen years, companies employing mobile workforces to ensure they can monitor and measure field operations, enabling managers to maximise efficiency and minimise costs to give a better bottom line, have used Codegate’s software. That’s what makes our customers talk about us the way they do, but don’t take my word for it, read their words here.

Do you have a better plan for beating the competition and maximising your return in what may be the second dip of a recession?  If you have I’m interested in your thoughts, leave a comment below. Of course, if you’d like to discuss a possible mobile computer soultion for deployment in your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Will Your Seasonal Gifts Make it on Time?

Posted on 7 November 2011 | No responses

I know the clever, organised ones amongst you will have already purchased and wrapped all your loved ones gifts for the coming festive season, but some of us haven’t been quite so ‘on the ball’. Fortunately for us there are many on-line retailers able to supply gifts right up to the eve of Christmas Eve.

Which gets me thinking about just how these last minute orders are fulfilled, or more specifically how many times a package’s barcode label is ‘read’ from the time it’s applied to the time we take delivery. We’re all familiar with the courier’s consignment number being scanned when it finally arrives at our door, but have you considered how many barcodes are scanned as a result of your one product purchase? Let’s have a closer look! Read more

Could Apple’s Siri benefit your business?

Posted on 20 October 2011 | No responses

You’d have to be living on another planet to miss the launch of Apple’s latest iPhone the 4S, but have you spotted ‘Siri’ the personal assistant and voice recognition application? This is, in my opinion, the most exciting development to hit computing since the microchip!

All the demonstrations I’ve seen ask Siri ‘What’s the weather like today?” or “Will I need an umbrella today?” Then they add as an after thought, “in San Francisco?” and miraculously Siri returns with the spoken response “You’ll need your umbrella today in San Francisco.”

The demonstrations are clever but whilst Siri is still in beta, it isn’t claimed to be Artificial Intelligence (AI) although it does understand conversational concepts and will link previous requests to the current. It also knows where you are, from GPS co-ordinates and from your diary what your schedule is, so by asking what’s the “Weather like today?” without adding “in [place name]” it can give you the forecast for your current location. Read more

Has the stylus lost its style? What next for rugged data capture?

Posted on 27 September 2011 | No responses

Are smartphones and tablets changing the way we input data into rugged mobile computers?

Back in the bad old days, we entered everything through the keyboard, and on hand held rugged devices it was tough, sometimes involving three key depressions to input one alpha character. Then came a mini version of Microsoft Windows complete with a touch screen and stylus. The display became more graphic, the drop down selection boxes and menus became more fiddly, hence the ingenious stylus. Using the stylus meant you could be precise about your selection, double tapping to confirm. But, the stylus was often difficult to find!

Many users easily overcame the problem; everyone carried the instant stylus replacement tool, the ballpoint pen.  To the user this was an ideal, dual function, replacement for the evasive stylus, although the benefit would be short lived. The ballpoint pen left deep scratches on the sensitive touch screen and quickly made the screen more opaque than transparent. After a few weeks of this abuse the device would become unusable and the reputation of its manufacturer tarnished, through no fault of its own.

Could the latest smartphone and tablet technology provide a more effective input mechanism than the stylus? Finger swipes and gestures have replaced many selections previously  carried out by stylus stabbing, but can they be used in our rugged Auto-ID environment? Read more

Visitor Logging at Reception. Do You Take Note?

Posted on 21 September 2011 | No responses

In a slight deviation from our normal Auto-ID industry focus, I’d like to discuss a common problem within numerous small businesses, namely; compliance with Health & Safety in the way we record visitors to our premises.

We’ve all been to the large companies where the receptionist, seated in a grand foyer, keys our details into their computer system, a local printer feeds out a smart company visitor badge emblazoned with the organisation’s logo, along with our name in prominent type. The receptionist deftly inserts the badge into a clear plastic sheath and clips it to our suit jacket, enabling everyone to see our name (as wonderful or embarrassing as it may be) as we are escorted around the facility.

But what do small companies do? Invariably, the person you are meeting shakes your hand and says “welcome” or where technological  advances have allowed, an employee writes out a multipart, no carbon required, tear-off slip, by hand! Sorry for being so sweeping but I speak from bitter experience… Read more

Google Says ‘Hello’ to Moto

Posted on 24 August 2011 | No responses

In the Auto-ID industry there is no bigger hardware manufacturer of rugged mobile devices than Motorola Solutions Inc (MSI), a spin off from Motorola Inc. MSI’s business is split into two main segments Government, including sales of two-way radios and public safety systems and Enterprise which markets Auto-ID products including bar code scanners, mobile computers, wireless network systems, RFID readers and writers and OEM scan engines.  To give you an idea of size, MSI Enterprise sales worldwide were $2.7bn in 2010, 16% of that figure was accrued in Europe.

Back in March this year, my blog entitled “Windows Mobile 6.5 or Android?” questioned if the major manufacturers in our industry would utilise the Android operating system, obtained by Google in 2005, which is developed together with the Open Handset Alliance, and issued under a free software licence. To date, only Motorola’s Xoom tablet product employs Android, in this instance the ‘Honeycomb’ version designed specifically for tablets.  Honeywell have made a recent announcement launching its Developer Program for Android, suggesting it will be incorporating the OS in its new products. However, other manufacturers including Intermec, Psion and Datalogic have yet to integrate Google’s OS into their product line.

In news somewhat unrelated to the rugged mobile computer market but pertinent to the mobile phone arena and the wider software issues raised here, Samsung is reported to have hired an Android specialist hacker, further indicating the potential market impact of Google’s OS.

Given Google’s history with Android, the customer base that has grown on the back of the free software licence and the absence of an alternative from Microsoft, it’s understandable that Android has become widely adopted in the smartphone market. Many of the manufacturers, which are founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, including HTC, Samsung, LG, T-Mobile and others, have put their faith in the search engine giant’s operating system, in part because Google was not a hardware competitor. Now however, a new day has dawned as Google has purchased Motorola Mobility Inc. (MMI), one of the top five global mobile handset manufacturers. This move has instantly put Google into the hardware market, openly declaring itself a member of the competition.

So why would Google pay a premium of over 60% for the shares of MMI, if it was likely to hack off its customers and take the business into an area outside its core competence? The answer, we’re told by Google, is to protect its Android customers by acquiring MMI’s impressive patent library, rumoured to be over 17,000 strong with a further 7,000 awaiting approval. So armed, Google will be better placed to defend Android customers from patent suits originated by Apple, Nokia, RIM and HTC. Google further suggests its customers are ‘happy’ with the acquisition, and has suggested that it will operate MMI at ‘arms length’ and may even sell off the hardware business.

Some industry watchers suggest Google is really attempting to build an integrated ‘ecosystem’ for Android, copying Apple’s iPhone and iPad success through controlling the hardware, software (iOS) and delivery of applications through app stores. The concept of a Google controlled mobile with Android operating system, predominantly (one would assume) displaying a Google search screen with a Google+ social networking icon, may be attractive, but this road is littered with corpses. Given the experience of others that have tried this approach, including Microsoft with Zune and the Kin phone, RIM with Blackberry, Oracle with Sun, HP’s problems of Palm and more recently with WebOS, it’s all pointing to the difficulties of an integrated business model.

The only company that’s succeeded with the integrated model to date is Apple, although some say Amazon are hot on their heels with their Kindle product. Can Google emulate Apple and succeed in creating an integrated business model, or will they end up like Microsoft and their Kin phone?

I’m no financial advisor, but as they say in financial circles, I’m short on Google.

What do you think of Google’s acquisition, good move or, end in tears?

Feel free to leave a comment below. Or, alternatively if you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a mobile solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

The Internet of Things, the Auto-ID Utopia!

Posted on 16 August 2011 | No responses

The concept isn’t new but is brilliant! Everything will have an Internet Protocol (IP) address, every fridge, kettle, painting, sofa, livestock animal, vehicle, you name it – everything. OK, more specifically, everything that can be uniquely identified by an RFID or NFC tag, (or even a 2d bar code) which when you think in Auto-ID terms encompasses almost everything.

Everything becomes traceable, uniquely identifiable and connectable. You’d be able to Google your WiFi connected fridge to see if you need to buy milk on the way home, connect to your boiler to increase the house temperature 30 minutes before you arrive and get the digital freesat recorder to record the first half of The One Show because you’ll be late. Or, if you don’t want the hassle, you’d use BBC iPlayer to replay it later. All this sounds very “Tomorrow’s World”, but the only thing that isn’t in place to make this happen is an affordable way of printing NFC tags…and yes if you’re a regular reader here you will know that I have written before about the need for lower cost tags.

Most homes and the majority of businesses are equipped with a wireless network and a broadband internet connection. By giving everything a unique IP address, you’ll be able to connect to anything from any internet connection. As with everything wireless, it would obviously be a good idea to install some security to discourage opportunistic enquiries from undesirables. Once tagged, asset management, product movement, supply logistics, insurance schedules, environmental control and product traceability become simple applications fed with accurate, machine readable data.

The missing link is affordable wireless (NFC) tags.

A privately owned UK company, Additive Process Technologies of Market Harborough, Leicestershire has come up with a possible solution as reported in NFC World. APT’s Allan Goodman is quoted in the article:

“Our process takes a lot of the cost out of the tag manufacturing process, taking away the plastic (inlay), the expensive conductive adhesive and expensive inks, using the lowest cost materials to produce a tag instead, in one efficient step.”

This sounds exactly like the breakthrough needed to bring the benefits of unique identification within economic range, i.e. less than 5 pence a tag, removing the last barrier to mass proliferation…price!

Once critical mass is achieved and NFC equipped mobile phones enable consumers to ‘read’ the tags electronically, applications will emerge to facilitate everything from electronic wallets to monitoring your heart through the NFC ‘patch’ stuck to your chest. Your mobile phone will become the key to your car, your front door and will act as your proof of identity for benefit or taxation purposes, all protected by biometric, finger print or iris recognition via the inbuilt digital camera.

With everything uniquely tagged it will be much easier for police to identify goods stolen by looters/thieves, giving the Courts irrefutable evidence of guilt. The potential benefits to manufacturers tracing a batch of products with a faulty component, or determining the maintenance history of an air conditioning plant, would be considerable. Even established bar code applications, like the NHS blood bag marking, livestock, “farm to fork” and food traceability applications could be significantly developed and enhanced to eliminate manual keying errors.

UTOPIA! Well it is to an Auto-ID evangelist like me.

Do you think we’ll ever get to the stage where everything is tagged or is it a pipedream?  Feel free to leave a comment below. Or, alternatively if you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Is RFID a lost cause?

Posted on 27 June 2011 | No responses

Near Field Communications (NFC) is a form of RFID that I’ve referenced several times in the past and is a continued ‘watch’ on my list of technologies of the future. Last week saw NFC get a significant boost through the formation of a joint venture between Everything Everywhere (which runs T-Mobile and Orange cellular networks in the UK), Telefonica (O²) and Vodafone. This joint venture says it will, “deliver the technology required for the speedy adoption of mobile wallet and payments”. You can read more about this here.

Mobile wallets, the ability to electronically pay for things by waving your mobile phone in front of a payment terminal, isn’t relevant to our Auto-ID world, or is it? There are many examples of hardware features appearing in the consumer mobile device which subsequently arrive in our more rugged enterprise focused mobile devices. Digital cameras are the most obvious example, and are frequently used in Proof of Delivery (PoD) applications to prove a delivery was attempted, usually by taking a picture of the front door. But it’s also true of GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometers and digital compasses, they’ve all appeared in rugged devices after the mass consumer market adoption brought down the cost of manufacture.
So how will the Auto-ID arena use NFC? The answer is in many ways. Unlike the much talked about, but little implemented, general Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) market, NFC will become mass market as consumers will be using the technology daily, forcing mass market adoption and therefore making the technology ubiquitous. We’ll see NFC’s introduction in applications as varied as; Asset Tracking to Security Guard Route checks, from Ticket Validation to Airline Check-in at airports… But wait a minute, wasn’t the same claimed for RFID back in the 90’s? Yes it was, so I feel I’d better explain why I think NFC will succeed where RFID has failed.

Both RFID and NFC depend on modulating and demodulating a radio frequency transmitted through an antenna and usually received via a hand-held reader. With NFC this device could simply be a mobile phone, but with RFID it’s often a separate hand-held gun type reader or a large add-on accessory to a rugged hand held terminal. The main barrier to adoption of any RFID application is cost. The RFID tags are expensive, depending on whether they incorporate a battery (active), or not (passive), they are unlikely to cost less than £0.15p and in some cases can be as much as several pounds per tag. Whilst the tag cost can quickly add up, each of the devices required to read or write to these tags cost several hundred pounds.

Now compare that scenario to NFC: The tags are likely to be passive and thus low cost, add to that the savings created through mass production, and the physical reduction in the size of read/write hardware to single integrated circuit chip form, the cost is minimal by comparison. If NFC chips fit within the existing, physically very small, mobile phone casing, the add-on cost for the manufacturer will be equally small. These chips will be made in the millions to fit within mobile phones from manufacturers including, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, HTC and even Apple, and our Auto-ID manufacturers including Motorola, Intermec, Honeywell, Datalogic and Psion will incorporate the technology in their rugged devices soon.

The result should be the mass adoption of NFC in Auto-ID applications, because the main barrier to implementation has been removed – cost. NFC will succeed where RFID has failed because NFC will provide a speedy return on investment thanks to a much reduced capital cost from the off.

Do you think NFC will fill the gap which RFID failed to fill?
Will NFC evolve to replace current functional deployments of RFID?
Do you have a scenario where you could see NFC solving an issue which RFID has never fulfilled?

Feel free to leave a comment below. Or, alternatively if you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Could you reveal all to your customer?

Posted on 17 June 2011 | No responses

We’ve had the worst recession I’ve ever experienced, arguably we’re still in it, but what can we do to help ourselves out of it? Well one fairly obvious way would be to create profits. No, I’m not being flippant, nor am I bashing the ‘save costs by cutting back’ mantra. I really do mean we can help businesses, or more specifically those that employ mobile workers, to grow out of recession by increasing profits.

Conventional wisdom dictates we should cut back on everything other than essential costs – yes we should – now is most certainly not the time to be wasteful. But in comparison to creating profits, saving money is easy, you can simply turn off a light to save money (not much, but it’s a start!). Creating or increasing profit means beating the competition, justifying your sales margin and increasing customer loyalty. It can mean creating a trusted ‘expert’ advisor relationship with your customers rather than just being a supplier. But how?

Your mobile workers are visiting customers every day, writing reports of their progress and noting any specific conditions which could affect their job on site. They note recommendations they’ve made to the users, changes in the environment they visit or simply their everyday interactions with on-site staff. You probably record this in your customer relationship management system (CRM) for use in preparing for their next visit. But this information could be pure’ gold’ to your customer and if you share it with them, through a secure customer specific portal on your web site, your status with your customer will increase enormously.

What does this mean in practice? If your mobile worker has left a note recommending a specification, or environmental, or usage change, it becomes part of a record of their expert opinion. If proven justified in the future, your customer will come to rely on the information your team is providing. Your company becomes the trusted ‘expert ‘advisor rather than simply another supplier. When your competitor approaches this customer with his “I’m cheaper” offering, your customer will ask if he’s also able to be transparent in his dealings with them and can he prove his service quality will match yours. Your competitor is unlikely to be able to prove his claims and your customer will remain loyal.  A loyal customer is far more likely to recommend your services to his peers, increasing your business, creating profits!

But be warned this is not for the fainthearted; it takes guts, a lot of discipline on the part of your employees to write up their best advice and strong management to monitor the effectiveness of your new open policy. You’ll then be able to measure the results and manage the inevitable business growth.

Could you trust your employees to write the right things, would you be able to be totally open with your customer? Share your thoughts and experiences below in the comments section, I’d love to hear your views on this…

If you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

On this day a year ago?

Posted on 10 June 2011 | No responses

On this day last year I asked, “Can iPhone 4 work for business?” following the new iPhone’s introduction at Apple’s 2010 WWDC in San Francisco. At the same event this year, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs shared some amazing numbers before announcing iOS 5, OS Lion for Macs and iCloud – as he said “It’s all about software!”

Before looking a little more into the answer to my question last year, it’s worth restating some of the numbers he shared. Briefly, he told us Apple has:

• Sold over 200 million iOS devices
• Over 500,000 applications approved on its App Store
• Users who’ve collectively downloaded ‘more than 14 billion apps’

Obviously iOS devices include the iPhone range but also the iPad tablet computer and the iPod Touch, the WiFi only version of the iPhone. What’s significant is the iPhone has only been around since 2007 yet has been widely accepted by consumers and business users alike.

Many IT professionals have found themselves having to accept the integration of the iPhone into their corporate IT structure, often because the loudest proponents for its use are Board level Directors. In response to many critics of the iPhone’s security features, Apple has raised the bar by announcing the encryption of all data transferred between the device and its new on-line internet storage service – iCloud.

So back to the question, “Can iPhone 4 work for business?”, the answer is a straight forward Yes, with a surprising number of buts.

• Only if it’s tough enough for your environment
• Assuming you can find an application that works for you, or can have one written
• If losing data through a lack of back-up battery isn’t a worry
• Assuming the staff who’ll actually use it approves of the hardware, because they’ll have an easy excuse not to should it become broken
• Not if you need an integrated, high speed, bar code scanner
• Not if you’ll want to lock down the device to operate a single specific application or discreet set of applications
• If you can roll-out all devices before the next, newer, faster, slimmer model emerges

In a nutshell, the iPhone, in common with all the smartphones, is designed as a consumer product. It lacks the ruggedness required of many corporate mobile data capture devices and, had it been designed with ruggedness in mind, would not have achieved the extremely high level of consumer sales. We’ve dealt with the comparison of smartphone versus rugged device before.

Congratulations to Apple, they have achieved a remarkable feat in the volume of sales, the creation of a whole new platform and a clear leadership in a ‘post pc’ era. They’re now reportedly the biggest purchaser of NAND flash memory technology, exceeding even HP. You have to admire a company that’s come from being the target of many jokes in the PC industry, to building a capitalisation that now exceeds Intel and Microsoft combined.

What do you think, are smartphones good enough for the job? Have you experienced implementing them? Feel free to leave a comment below.

If you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a mobile solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808. Remember, you can always keep up with what we’re discussing by following CodegateLtd on twitter.

older posts »