Stanley, Palm combo took years to cement

The Stanley Works mobile deployment was the culmination of several years of work by both the company and its partner in the undertaking, Palm Inc.
Palm approached the company about the possibility of working mobile into their systems, and it took two to three years of developing the relationship and the product before Stanley was ready to launch, according to Gail Moody, director of business markets for Palm. She credited the Palm devices’ user interface and touch screen for helping the company beat out competitors.
Moody also credited Stanley Works, a Fortune 500 company with a 163-year history, with being flexible and open to change. Larger companies with many legacy systems, and those whose employees are accustomed to a “tried and true” way of doing things, she said, sometimes might face challenges in adopting wireless business applications.
“It’s the kind of company where changing things could meet with a little bit of resistance, but this wasn’t the case,” Moody added. The simplicity of the application helped minimize the training time involved, Moody said.
Moody says that Palm sees enterprises going through a typical cycle when it comes to mobility. First, companies will usually mobilize e-mail as a first step, and they’ll provide mobile e-mail for a certain rank of employees. Then, mobile e-mail is likely to be extended in phases to employees in other areas of the business. Mobile e-mail is the most widely adopted business application, Moody said, with about 80 percent of businesses that are mobilizing their workers choosing to deploy an e-mail solution.
“Once they’ve done that and they’ve realized the benefits, they tend to look at a basic business process and mobilizing that,” she added. She said that sales-force automation and mobilization is approaching 20-to-25 percent of mobile businesses, and is appealing because of its distinct and measurable return on investment.
“It’s clearly a second step beyond e-mail, but I think it’s an area where we’re seeing the most rapid growth,” Moody said.