Monday, June 2, 2003
Smart Scheduling Becomes The Killer Application
Posted by Andy Sjostrom in "THOUGHT" @ 12:00 AM
http://www.devx.com/Intel/Article/15770
Smaller devices, smarter services and increasing connectivity puts the user in a peculiar situation. It's becoming easier to stay reachable and online and harder to stay present "in real life". Is smart scheduling the answer? I touched on the subject nine months ago in my post "Always connected, never focused".
I spotted the article "Making Sense of Mobility" in this weekend's newsletter from DevX. The article is supposed to give "you some ideas of how to think about mobile, the users, and the opportunity in the midst of a chaotic technical market" and is a nice business oriented article. What caught my interest was the following scenario description:
"Consider the example of a sales representative walking through the grocery store when a critical event occurs. A customer has just canceled a large order. The local application running on the sales reps handheld device parses the corresponding event and issues requests for additional information before notifying him with the bad news. No rushing home to log on the network for more information on the account. No surprises when he gets to the office the next morning. The sales rep has what he needs to begin thinking about saving the sale—customer contact, historical ordering, and current inventory and pricing information—even before he gets to the end of the produce aisle."
I have myself often talked about how mobile solutions can enable workers to participate in business processes even without a cable attached to a network outlet. Mobile access to information systems is a great thing for the company, the company's clients and the worker. However, as human beings we need time off, time to reflect, time with our families and kids, and in the mentioned article, time to do grocery shopping. The easy answer is to turn off all electronic devices, but I believe that we'll soon see a more sophisticated and flexible way of notifying systems when I am reachable and when I am not.
I believe users would get a higher acceptance of connected devices if they could get more control of who and what system can reach them and when. The answer to this is smart scheduling services.
I would look for the following features in a first version of smart scheduling:
• schedule when events in critical and non-critical information systems can notify me over e-mail and SMS
• schedule when my cell phone accepts business related calls
• link my schedule to an online account (to me personally this means Passport) so that I can manage it from anywhere
The sales scenario in the article does have an interesting passage where it says: "The local application running on the sales reps handheld device parses the corresponding event and issues requests for additional information before notifying him with the bad news.". The requests for additional information could, from a smart scheduling perspective, mean checking the user's availability schedule before deciding whether or not to notify the sales rep.
Feel free to voice your opinion or just add more features to the list of fundamental smart scheduling features!
Smaller devices, smarter services and increasing connectivity puts the user in a peculiar situation. It's becoming easier to stay reachable and online and harder to stay present "in real life". Is smart scheduling the answer? I touched on the subject nine months ago in my post "Always connected, never focused".
I spotted the article "Making Sense of Mobility" in this weekend's newsletter from DevX. The article is supposed to give "you some ideas of how to think about mobile, the users, and the opportunity in the midst of a chaotic technical market" and is a nice business oriented article. What caught my interest was the following scenario description:
"Consider the example of a sales representative walking through the grocery store when a critical event occurs. A customer has just canceled a large order. The local application running on the sales reps handheld device parses the corresponding event and issues requests for additional information before notifying him with the bad news. No rushing home to log on the network for more information on the account. No surprises when he gets to the office the next morning. The sales rep has what he needs to begin thinking about saving the sale—customer contact, historical ordering, and current inventory and pricing information—even before he gets to the end of the produce aisle."
I have myself often talked about how mobile solutions can enable workers to participate in business processes even without a cable attached to a network outlet. Mobile access to information systems is a great thing for the company, the company's clients and the worker. However, as human beings we need time off, time to reflect, time with our families and kids, and in the mentioned article, time to do grocery shopping. The easy answer is to turn off all electronic devices, but I believe that we'll soon see a more sophisticated and flexible way of notifying systems when I am reachable and when I am not.
I believe users would get a higher acceptance of connected devices if they could get more control of who and what system can reach them and when. The answer to this is smart scheduling services.
I would look for the following features in a first version of smart scheduling:
• schedule when events in critical and non-critical information systems can notify me over e-mail and SMS
• schedule when my cell phone accepts business related calls
• link my schedule to an online account (to me personally this means Passport) so that I can manage it from anywhere
The sales scenario in the article does have an interesting passage where it says: "The local application running on the sales reps handheld device parses the corresponding event and issues requests for additional information before notifying him with the bad news.". The requests for additional information could, from a smart scheduling perspective, mean checking the user's availability schedule before deciding whether or not to notify the sales rep.
Feel free to voice your opinion or just add more features to the list of fundamental smart scheduling features!
