Business sans frontiers

As Business Development Manager for Sybase EMEA, Henrik Kummel works with the region’s leading organisations to articulate technology and vision.

In this role, he serves as key liaison to the company’s product team in North America and other regions, and assesses current and future trends to ensure Sybase continues to deliver proven, future-ready solutions to the marketplace.

Business Management spoke exclusively with Kummel about what is driving some of those trends and why the company’s solutions are proving so valuable in European business today.

BM. How are companies using mobility applications and wireless technologies to extend the enterprise beyond the traditional four walls of the office? What advantages do these solutions offer?
HK. Extending the enterprise beyond the four walls, takes the enterprise to where business is taking place. This is not only beneficial in improving efficiencies but is increasingly key to the survival of the company. As counterparties – both customers and business partners – become adapted to the new paradigm of business without constraint, they expect to be able to do business with you regardless of where you or they are. Today’s companies cannot afford to lose out on opportunities simply because the employee is not able to transact with the system of the company, because the employee is not inside the four walls!

There are many examples to illustrate this, such as field service technicians and account managers, who spend much of their time onsite working with customers and need access to critical business information and applications at their fingertips in order to be able to assist customers in real-time. Ultimately, when the system is not where the business is, you risk losing that business!

BM. And how is greater information availability helping to maximise the productivity of workers on the road/out of office?
HK. For some enterprises, the existential paradigm is no longer that of an enterprise valued of its physical assets (buildings, production facilities, etc.), but rather one that is valued according its accrued knowledge. Knowledge is comprised of information plus know-how. No amount of information will bring actual value to the company when it’s locked up in internal data centres. Only when information is in the hands of the workers – at the point of business – will it bring value. As an example, when a salesman is able to access a customers’ history in real-time on his mobile device he can propose a host of additional services that he would never be able to otherwise. He is also empowered to investigate, and sometimes solve in real-time, issues that the customer or business partner had in doing business with you.

BM. What challenges, both technological and cultural, are companies likely to face when looking to ‘unwire’ in the next few years?
HK. Many companies have started to access the first part of the equation – information mobility. However, to make the business truly pervasive – to really remove the barriers of those four walls imprisoning the office activity – you need to go the next step and mobilise the transactions.

The challenge in technology terms is having an infrastructure that is both secure and where the transaction is replicated from the mobile device into the central system as fast as possible, while at the same time not becoming an obstacle to the business transactions taking place.

BM. So how can your solutions help address some of these challenges?
HK. When addressing the issue of continuing to do business regardless of connectivity, a basic difficulty with these applications is maintaining transactional integrity. Our solutions, however, will do it for you. You can design and develop the applications – or extend your existing applications to mobile – without having the synchronisation issue as part of the development effort. This, for a truly mobile application, represents a major part of the development effort. Sybase has a track record of over 20 years in infrastructure software aimed at solving exactly this problem.

BM. Information security is obviously a key issue. Where should companies begin when dealing with a solution for both security and mobility – can the two realistically co-exist?
HK. Information security and the associated problems like identity-theft are very real indeed. The part of the information that is stored in our mobile devices is therefore natively encrypted to avoid seeing our customers’ information compromised. An additional layer of security is addressed by our Afaria offering, where we’re protecting not only the data stored in our embedded databases, but also all the rest of the information in the device – from address-books to emails to flat-files. This offering also addresses the challenges of software distributions and compliance.

BM. You’ve enjoyed considerable success in the mobile enterprise space – what do you think sets you apart from your competitors?
HK. From the start, our solutions are built on the occasionally-connected paradigm – where the transactions happen as fast as possible, while not being dependent on the presence of the not-so-ubiquitous connectivity. Our technology allows you to simply extend your existing enterprise systems from within the four walls, into the hands of the workers wherever they are, independent on continued connectivity.

It used to be the case that a representative would use the information they are carrying in some mobile form (a laptop or smart-phone perhaps) to fill out paperwork, which would be eventually be entered into the central system when either the worker makes it back inside the four walls of the office or when they fax it back for a clerk to deal with, with the associated errors and typos. Fortunately, that time has past.

BM. Finally, how would you sum up the reasons why a senior executive should consider mobilising their enterprise? And why should they come to you for help?
HK. Mobilizing the enterprise is good for business. One good example is the proof-of-delivery associated with shipping companies. A shipping company cannot invoice without proof that a given parcel has actually been delivered. In a classic set-up, the business process in the company is to wait for the truck-driver to make it back to the base and for re-entry into the system – which would happen the next day if the truck only makes it back after the working hours of the office. With the kind of mobile solutions we empower for our customers, the proof of delivery happens immediately, with a major impact on the liquidity of the company.