In our last posts we discussed five practical steps companies can take to unlock the value in critical remote information, as well as steps one through three. In this post we’ll discuss the fourth step which is to assure what you build is scalable.

So far, you’ve staked out your remote information, figured out exactly how you’ll capture it, and hopefully applied the right technology. Now we arrive at step four which asks the burning questions: will what you choose today have the scalability to take you into the future?

Quite simply, assuring scalability also comes down to understanding and anticipating future needs. Every business is different, but similar companies follow the same general path. Some of the considerations when deciding whether a solution will successfully scale as you grow include the following:

• Is the current project just a start for a much broader implementation? If so, will the technology work in the larger scope?
• It could be the best technology solution, but if your people don’t adopt it, you won’t be able to scale it. You’ll want to create solutions that are user appropriate and assure a training plan is built in.
• Looking inside the company, traditional scalability questions have to do with company growth factors such as size, locations, employees, assets, customers, competitors, etc. Looking outside the company you’ll want to consider fundamental shifts in the market and anticipated regulatory changes.
• Finally, take a look at the technology itself. Is it expected to undergo changes or even quickly become obsolete? Will it meet the types of challenges and growth you see ahead?

No advice these days would be complete without considering mobility scalability. Smartphones, tablets and the like are exploding in use. Revenues are forecasted to at least double over the next four years for both categories. Advancements in technology are driving the price of cellular and satellite downward and given that most people use smartphones in their everyday lives, uptime to adopt new mobile business apps on these devices will be much faster. All good news, but will what you choose today scale into the future?

Aberdeen recently conducted a study reporting that Best in Class field service organizations, with as few as 100 technicians, could save up to $8,000,000 per year over industry Laggards by implementing effective mobility solutions. Chief among the drivers of effective solutions included: use of electronic forms, operable in offline mode, real-time systems integration, accommodation of varied platforms and the ability to generate on-demand performance metrics. At minimum, make sure the solutions you consider can at least do all of the above.

Mobility’s rapid paced change across a range of devices, networks, data and communication services, makes predicting scalability a challenge. For this reason, Skymira developed its MobiGatewayTM to seamlessly and easily tie together non-similar devices and information. An alternative to developing programs in native apps, MobiGatewayTM significantly reduces development time, operates both online and offline, and assures increased security. It also assures that changes down the road can be more easily accommodated.

Next we’ll address step five, implementing the solution in the most effective and least disruptive way. To view the white paper in its entirety, go to our website at http://www.skymira.com/resource-center-whitepapers.htm

In our last posts we discussed five practical steps companies can take to unlock the value in critical remote information, as well as steps one and two. In this post we’ll discuss the third step which is to develop a plan to apply the right technology for how you operate.

As we mentioned in step two, you want to work with a firm who will understand your business and provide a solution appropriate for the way you operate. Nowhere is this more important than choosing the right technology. There’s an incredible array of technology available today, but how do you understand what’s right for you? Cellular or satellite, for example, typically comes down to coverage and latency. Some assets are never in cell range and while others may enter into cell range at some time, can you wait for the information?

Or take for instance the exploding Smartphone and M2M technologies. By all accounts, revenues are forecasted to at least double over the next four years for both categories. Even conservative estimates are as high as 10 Billion Plus Smart-devices across a range of platforms and networks by the year 2020. Both technologies are driving the price of cellular and satellite services downward. Applications that seemed too expensive before will be suddenly more affordable. Given that most people use Smartphones in their everyday personal lives, uptime to adopt new mobile business apps on these devices will be much faster.

You should also consider the integration impact. How compatible is the technology with your existing enterprise infrastructure, and how competent are your people with it? In most cases there are proven solutions that will be compatible, the trick is in knowing which. You might want to consider an integration specialist well versed in remote information solutions. It’s often more cost advantageous to outsource when you are incorporating technologies you have no prior experience with. It’s often the best way to assure you’ll gain the full economic potential from your project. For example, some satellite services, if not properly administered with the right tools, will provide you with a shocking bill at some point.

Finally, you want to avoid the pitfalls that are common with technology implementation, Chief among them is over-reaching. Projects that are too cumbersome to make it all the way to completion or technologies that unto themselves are dazzling, but fail to provide the base for a well performing solution are prevalent pitfalls. Here’s our list of what we see most often:

• Failure to include use restrictions, especially for satellite.
• Deploying technology that satisfies the current application but does not anticipate future needs.
• Selecting providers with limited range of offerings and/or ability to execute.
• Selecting technology or creating applications that are too complicated for your people to use on a regular basis.
• Over-extending; starting too big, rather than proving out a couple of smaller high probability successes first.

Next we’ll address step four, assuring what you build will be scalable with your business as it changes and grows. To view the white paper in its entirety, go to our website at http://www.skymira.com/resource-center-whitepapers.htm

In our last posts we discussed five practical steps companies can take to unlock the value in critical remote information, as well as covering Step One. In this post we’ll discuss the second step which is to assess exactly how you will capture the remote information. This is the step most people miss. The information capture assessment is critical to ultimate success.

Start with identifying what it is you’re capturing. Is it exception reporting? Is it a sale or transaction record? Is it security status or fleet monitoring and tracking? Each of these is very different from one another and the solutions will be just as different.

We recommend three aspects to focus on when deciding how you will capture the remote information.

1. Technology – Do you know what the best technology is for your business and for each application? Will you know how to successfully apply it?

2. Organization and People – Do you have the right people in place to leverage the technology and consistently apply it in capturing the information?

3. Process – Do you have the processes in place for capturing and using the remote information? Or will you need to develop new processes?

The first of the three aspects, technology, is the obvious area and as mentioned, the one most organizations focus on almost exclusively. This is no surprise as most suppliers want to sell you the platform and the service, but may not spend the time becoming knowledgeable about your business and how you operate. Make sure whomever you partner with understands your company and can present technology recommendations in the context of your business. Avoid solutions that may be beyond your capability to maintain or even use. Look for simpler more practical solutions.

The second, organization and people is one of the more important aspects in capturing information. Efficacy and compliance of your solution in the hands of your people is one of the key contributing factors in assuring a successful project. Asking your workers to dramatically change the things they do on a daily basis is always a risk – remember, many people secretly reject change.

The manner in which you capture information should result in as little change as possible, especially in non-office environments where computer skills were never part of the job description. For initial implementations, keep it simple -- this will assure faster uptime and greater overall compliance with the new process.

Process is the third component. Ask yourself, are there existing processes in place that make it easier to capture the selected information or are they non-existent and will require development? Designing and deploying new business processes can certainly increase the risk of your project. Where possible, work with existing processes, or at a minimum, adopt new processes that are within the mainstream of how your business currently operates. At all costs, avoid dropping a completely foreign process into place.

Next we’ll address step three, developing a plan to apply the right technology for how you operate. To view the white paper in its entirety, go to our website at http://www.skymira.com/resource-center-whitepapers.htm

You’re looking at the satellite bill that is usually about $1,800 -- and this month it is $436,000. You pick yourself off the floor and you have got to believe it’s a mistake. After all you had just put in a new satellite broadband system that was only supposed to do voice and e-mail, and at a lower rate. Your company is going to take a $436,000 hit on expenses and you ask “How in the world did this happen?”

Sound far-fetched? Not at all. It happened recently to a shipping company where controls they thought were in place weren’t there – giving their crew unlimited satellite access to the internet, with unregulated downloading of information. The vendor they employed to set this up failed to install key components for any broadband installation:

• the vendor forgot to remove internet access from the satellite communication package.
• after the incorrect satellite installation, they didn’t perform the type of testing to confirm that all the communication components were working as the customer expected.
• and they weren’t monitoring the communication usage, looking for unexpected spikes. In essence they let the meter run without notifying the customer.

So how do you make sure this doesn’t happen to you? First of all you work with a company that has expertise in optimizing your system to provide the most efficient flow of business information, while also applying controls tailored to your business needs – helping you avoid that shocking bill. Today’s satellite broadband terminals are more than just a terminal you buy off the shelf and plug in. If you go that route just plan on the day you will get the bill that will knock you out of your chair.

Skymira has been on top of this from the beginning. Our April, 2010, blog entry “Avoiding Excessive Satellite Charges” described this scenario, and the risks in deploying any satellite communication system without also establishing a method for controlling the more significant satellite communication cost. The entry goes on to discuss Skymira’s Intelligent IP Controls and how, by locking in customer-specified proper uses and locking out improper use, abuse and inexperience that typically results in expensive hits, carrier charges are more effectively managed. I encourage you to read it to understand how it all works.

Here’s the link to a very unfortunate and preventable situation. Make sure this doesn’t happen to you. “The cost of unrestrained access to the internet by the crew”

In our last post we discussed five practical steps companies can take to unlock the value in critical remote information. In this post we’ll discuss the first step which is to determine where your potential remote information currently resides.

It’s basically a task of searching the enterprise for possible opportunities. But where do you start?  Value is almost always created through increased revenue and profits or decreased operating expenses -- these are your best places to start. Table 1, below, provides a framework for assessing the most probable places to find remote information that can be leveraged into new value. 

TABLE 1

People are the natural source to consider first. Quite simply, do you have remote workers outside the enterprise who in the course of their daily activities gather or have access to information that could help you make good business decisions faster? Do they have knowledge that can be turned into better client outcomes and increased satisfaction? Or perhaps you have remote workers whose safety is your concern and knowing their status is important to you.

Assets are the second area to examine. Any kind of fleet, whether on water or on the road, offers tremendous potential for information value. Equipment is another area to look at as well. Knowing the location and status of high-value assets gives you the ability to deploy them rapidly, reduce downtime, increase performance and monitor their security. Assets prove tremendously valuable in both monetary terms and in potential business interruption when loss occurs.

Paperwork is third area to examine, especially where there are remotely administered paper-based forms. The idea is to turn paper-based forms into electronic forms providing information in real-time A good example are the fuel-oil suppliers that have turned paper delivery tickets into electronic forms sent real-time. Cash flow is increased considerably when the driver’s record is turned into emailed billing statements sent to customers before the truck is out of the driveway.

Our last two most likely places are data and communication. Any form of remote data offers potential for increasing value by accessing in real-time the information it provides. Access to this data might help speed up decision making, reduce risks or increase business performance. Communication with remote workers can speed up the flow of business knowledge or create an environment for increased productivity.

We’ll address Step Two, assessing exactly how you capture the information, in our next post.

Today’s satellite and cellular technology allows companies to access remote people, assets and information in ways not possible before. In almost all cases this information is of great value to the company. The value has always been there, but was either too difficult or expensive to access. That has changed. Proven technologies and intuitive applications as well as the decreasing price of cellular and satellite services have made remote information solutions extremely viable.

Yet all too many companies have not yet taken advantage of this value proposition. Perhaps the biggest reason is the perception of sheer complexity. With no prior experience, the idea of adopting such technology can appear challenging. We believe it doesn’t have to be difficult or an overly complicated process to locate and capture valuable remote information, and in the process increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your business all resulting in greater agility, customer satisfaction and ultimately profitability.

Over a series of blog posts, we’ll lay out a straight-forward five step process for identifying and capturing valuable remote information that can be leveraged into both greater business advantage and increased profitability. Above all else, these steps are designed to help you keep it simple and practical when first starting out.

We’ll start in this first post by defining our Five Steps.

Step One - Determine where valuable remote information resides in your organization. There are no pat answers here as each business will offer differing opportunities based on its markets, processes, people, and assets.

Step Two - Assess exactly how you will capture this information. This is as much a technology issue as it is a people and process consideration. Sure the technology might be able to work flawlessly, but will your people be able to use it? Is the information raw data accessible from a database or is it hand written forms that will need to be converted into electronic forms?

Step Three - Develop your plan for applying the right technology for how you operate. Considerations here might include whether cellular coverage available consistently or if your application will need to go to satellite. How user-friendly are the varying technologies and can they be easily adapted to and integrated with your enterprise systems are just a few more examples of what you’ll need to consider in step three.

Step Four - Sanity check the scalability. There’s no sense deploying something that is going to be obsolete before its useful life. This step is all about anticipating and projecting the future needs for your company. For example, how many other remote information projects might be able to leverage this same technology?

Step Five - Implement the solution in a way that is most effective and least disruptive.

Stay tuned for our next blog post where we will start to dig into each of the five steps.

by Robert Landsfield 14. December 2010 19:32

We first ran into GENUS at the Satellite 2010 show earlier this year. Now a full seven months later, we have had enough experience with it to give you our honest review. Some background; The TerreStar GENUS is suited for people and businesses who need to always be reachable. With a single phone number and smartphone device, users with a line of sight to the satellite have expanded voice and data roaming coverage in the United States, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and in territorial waters, where traditional cellular service does not exist. In September, AT&T announced the launch of a satellite mobile service using TerreStar's GENUS dual-mode smartphone. We’ve seen interest in the device primarily through our Maritime, Oil & Gas and Utilities clients. Companies in these industries are considering issuing the phones to their technicians as well as crews working on inland and coastal maritime vessels. Here’s our assessment. 

Positives about the device:

• The ability to use the phone on cellular or satellite network with single phone number.

• Windows Mobile 6.5 Pro is installed and has most common features found on typical smart phones, including; email, calendar, web browser, text messaging, camera, MS Word, Excel & Powerpoint Mobile applications.

• The ability to use the phone as a modem for laptop computer via USB or Bluetooth connections.

Areas where we’d like to see eventual improvements made:

• Currently the satellite data rate is slow (10's of Kilobits per second) making web surfing and downloading email with large attachments in satellite model is painful if not impossible. We understand that TerreStar is expected to increase the data rate in 2011.

• The phone lacks an external vehicle antenna so the user must stand outside to use the satellite for voice or internet. It is unclear at this time whether TerreStar has an external antenna on its product roadmap. It is further unclear what affect, if any, TerreStar’s October 2010 Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection filing will have on the product roadmap.

• Management’s ability to control internet connection is limited. Without proper control, it is possible for users to connect any computer to the phone. Once the data speed is increased on the satellite, controlling which websites the user accesses are limited as well (…think downloadable movies at $5.00 per MByte!!). Some form of management control over satellite internet use is needed.

• The device relies on the user to decide whether to use satellite or cellular if available. An automated switching option is an improvement we’d like to see.

Leave us a comment whether this Product Review was helpful. If so, we’ll include more of them in future posts.

When it comes to Remote Operations, most companies lack the necessary information required to make good, consistent and effective decisions.

As we mentioned in our previous post, Data to Decision Cycle, remote communication technologies continue to prove out as highly reliable, allowing companies dependent on remotely located operations for a large part of their revenue, to tap into data and information from the field. Properly utilized, this data can be transformed into high-value decisions that can have tremendous impact on remote operational efficiency, speed and profit contribution.

Recently we completed several client assessments where we identified existing gaps in information and hence where effective decision making was being negatively impacted. What follows is a short list of what we see as some of the most common areas:

• Some Information Systems are limited in the tools and processes available for importing and exporting information. Re-keying of information is the typical work around. Information Systems with tools to import and export information leads to increased information and effective decision support.
• Another common area we see is that communication needs vary across the enterprise. Developing an overall plan will allow for better operation and significant savings. We apply the question, “how important is having the information available immediately to the operation” in determining the type of communication needed
• Many companies have no systematic way to track assets, know their location or movement. For some companies these assets are very expensive and their unavailability can have a serious effect on revenue and profits. Skymira typically recommends implementation of systems to provide real-time information to track and manage asset maintenance.
• Still other companies lack a process governing the control of inventory used in the production and/or servicing of the companies products. Implementing a best practice inventory management system leads to increased operating efficiencies and savings.
• In the area of Safety, companies deploying lone workers to remote locations where human supervision is not possible, should consider a Lone Worker Monitoring solution. These ‘Man-Down’ monitoring systems not only assure the safety of workers, but can also improve morale
• Finally, limited access to Management Information decreases the efficiency and effectiveness of decision making, typically leading to higher operating costs and decreased profits. Information captured via user-friendly interfaces with the ability to access and extract it easily and in real-time, is the most common solution.

We’re sure some of the above items may sound quite familiar to you and your operation. In future posts, we’ll examine why companies have not remedied many of these inefficiencies prior to now, and start to chart the best course for getting started.

Recently my wife and I were out on our back porch enjoying a summer evening, when we saw a bright white light moving rather quickly across the sky. It was moving too fast to be a star and there was no sign of any blinking, like a plane’s strobe lights will do. It dawned on me that what we were seeing could be the International Space Station (ISS), reflecting the sun’s light from its lower space orbit. My wife was not so convinced. We watched the light cross the horizon in what was probably less than four minutes.

Ever the space enthusiast, I decided to check in on my hunch. Sure enough, I found a website that renders exact details of when and where in the sky you can see all kinds of Satellite Flybys for your location. All you do is enter your zip code. As I said before, these satellites travel the horizon quickly, so there’s not a lot of room for being late to the show. Here’s where you go to find the next satellite flyby where you live. http://spaceweather.com/flybys/index.php Feel free to pass this on. Or, keep it a secret and amaze your friends and family from time to time when you say, “Oh hey, look over there, it’s the International Space Station”.

For the record, my wife thought I was brilliant to have figured it out. And for the first time in my life, I was smart enough not to say, “I told you so.”

On March 17th Skymira Founder and CEO, Bob Landsfield joined with other industry leaders at Satellite 2010 to discuss the future of next generation M2M satellite tracking solutions. After years of being confined largely to the commercial vehicle and GMDSS safety markets, the panel discussed how satellite tracking solutions are emerging in several new applications, including heavy equipment and fixed asset monitoring, military Blue Force Tracking, flight following, LRIT and personal tracking. As can be imagined, much of the emphasis was on consumer and personal applications -- basically a pursuit of the next killer application.

While there is no doubt consumer applications can drive significant demand for hardware and communication services, we believe there is an even bigger opportunity that remains under-leveraged. That opportunity is businesses with a large percentage of revenues and costs being generated through remotely located operations. For the past decade, satellite and cellular manufacturers pursuing non-commercial markets have historically placed more emphasis on the technology itself and less on actual business application. That left businesses with investments clearly underleveraged. Yet this focus was not in vain. If there is a silver lining to be had, it’s that we’ve arrived at a point in time where there is an abundance of great technology, increased accessibility and lower cost of communication services.

For over 10 years now, Skymira has been creating remote information systems for businesses, leveraging this same M2M satellite tracking technology. Our focus has been decidedly on the applications. Quite simply, we survey the client landscape looking for opportunities where remote data can be connected to the enterprise. The value that can be generated when this previously untapped data is turned into decision making information and increased control is huge. Return on investment is even more significant. If you’re interested in learning more, we encourage you to contact us.