Business Intelligence Without Wires

by Curt Hall

Wireless business intelligence (BI) is about delivering data access and analysis to users of cell phones and other Web-enabled devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), which are beginning to proliferate among business professionals and other mobile workers.

Most of the wireless business applications used by mobile workers today are constrained to broadcasting (pushing) alerts, e-mail, and other short messages to users via predefined channels to which the user subscribes. This is, obviously, a very limited form of access to business information. It is hardly interactive; it certainly isn't BI. What mobile workers need is interactive access to information so they can respond to urgent business matters without having to return to their desktop PC or a conventional (wireline) phone.

Today's push applications are an important first step toward supporting the mobile worker. However, pushing messages is problematic in two ways: first, users can't subscribe to everything in advance; second, this system doesn't allow users quick access to more details. Typically, the first thing users want when they receive a broadcast report is additional information that will allow them to make an informed response. This requires an ad hoc capability.

Thus, in addition to pushing information to users on a scheduled basis, users need to be able to pull the information they need, when they need it. To succeed, wireless BI must allow users to react immediately to appropriate events via the device on which the message was received -- conducting ad hoc queries of the data warehouse or drilling back on broadcast reports to acquire supplemental information. This is the goal of wireless BI.

Business Implications of Wireless BI

Web-enabled cell phones and other devices are destined to become the ubiquitous Internet platform. Weekly computer magazines and even daily newspapers are constantly spouting predictions that Web-enabled wireless phones and other devices will soon flood the market. For example, it is estimated that by 2004, 70% of cell phones and 80% of PDAs will feature some form of Internet access. Cellular phone giant Nokia predicts that the total market volume of Internet-capable mobile devices (including phones and PDAs) will exceed the market volume of laptop computers this year, equaling more than 30 million units sold worldwide. Estimates for the potential size of the wireless market range from the current US $1.8 billion to more than $13 billion by 2003.

Most of the hype surrounding wireless technology is based on providing customers with mobile access to news, stock quotes, sports scores, shopping, traffic, entertainment, and other consumer information. The obvious business proposition is to leverage mobile devices as another channel for selling to consumers using targeted advertising. Ambitious plans call for using geographical positioning systems tied to mobile devices to very selectively serve up consumer alerts -- such as sending a cell phone user a promotion for a particular restaurant as the user walks or drives near the establishment.

The business case for developing a wireless BI capacity is to allow companies to extend the advantages of their analytical applications to their mobile work force and decisionmakers on the go. The goal is to allow corporate users (including employees, partners, and suppliers) to benefit from the same information anywhere they may be -- at their desk, in a hotel, or in transit. This includes supporting the traditional mobile work force and enabling new mobile work scenarios that have yet to be envisioned.

Currently, the biggest focus is on Web-enabled mobile phones, but PDAs and other devices are also being targeted. The wireless market seeks to limit workers' needs to lug around a laptop and establish a wireline connection. Some proponents argue that giving corporate decisionmakers the ability to pull information from wherever they are will be the true value of wireless technology.

Some of the potential benefits afforded by wireless BI include:

• Allowing companies to further leverage their investments in data warehouses and analytical applications by making decision support available via multiple wireless devices.

• Offering secure wireless information access to information needed by mobile workers ranging from sales force personnel, service technicians, and transporters to managers and executives.

Consider the following wireless scenarios:

• A company sales representative can find out the amount of business the company has already done with an existing customer the rep is scheduled to meet with, compute the overall value of a potential customer, access inventory levels, and check shipping dates on customer orders using a Palm handheld device.

• A sales director can check quarterly sales figures from the car.

• A supplier can determine how well products are currently moving through a medical distributor's pipeline via a Windows CE Pocket PC wirelessly connected to the distributor's extranet portal.

• While driving to a luncheon, a call center manager is alerted to the fact that a call center branch is receiving an unusually high number of customer service calls, allowing the manager to shift call handling to other operations to take up the load.

• The company CEO can access key performance indicators from the airport while waiting for a flight.

There is still a tendency among many organizations to consider data warehouses as mere data storage facilities. (Perhaps the term data warehouse evokes images of a silo in which stagnant data is squirreled away in the hope that it may someday be used.) To the contrary, one of the main benefits of data warehousing and BI is that they enable the distribution of business information to different parts of the organization. Providing access via different devices can make such information even more beneficial.

At this time, mobile field workers who do not have access to BI in any form are the current focus of wireless corporate applications. Over time, I see several possible "killer" application domains for applying wireless BI. In particular, I believe that mobile phones and other wireless devices will be increasingly used as upper-level business tools, as applications such as balanced scorecards, sales force automation packages, and customer relationship management systems are developed to support handheld devices.

-- Curt Hall, Editor, Business Intelligence Advisor Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium