Online marketplace provider PurchasingCenter.com Inc. added the wireless feature after realizing that many of its customers work in areas such as plant floors where Internet access is rare. With the wireless online-procurement service, workers equipped with mobile devices can order, check status, pay for, and arrange delivery of sorely needed products. That's more efficient than scribbling down product data and calling in the information to an office clerk or leaving the work site to find a PC.

W.A. Berry & Son Inc., a Danvers, Mass., contract facilities-management company, is evaluating the service and plans to use it in the coming months. "This service looks to be a great way to boost technician productivity because, by minimizing order entry and related paperwork, we let them spend more time getting their real work done," says Charlie Collins, VP and general manager. "We want them spending more time turning wrenches, not continually running back to the shop to order things."

The downside is that the service costs customers more than if they order their products from a desktop PC. What's worse, PurchasingCenter .com won't say how much more its service costs. Customers must pay for their own wireless service, plus an undisclosed, per-transaction fee to PurchasingCenter.com.

To establish the wireless adjunct to its site, PurchasingCenter.com decided not to create the necessary software in-house. Instead, it installed a ready-to-go wireless software package from NetMorf, which also handles content rendering and formatting. The service supports Wireless Application Protocol phones, pagers, Palm VIIs, PocketPCs, and devices that run Windows CE.

Workers use those devices to access their employers' already-created online catalog that lists the products they buy. They highlight the product, enter the quantity, and click a buy button. The order is sent to a vendor that PurchasingCenter.com has chosen and set pricing with, and the total cost and default delivery address are sent to the workers' devices for confirmation. They can use a pre-entered credit-card number or pay by an electronic data interchange link with the supplier.

"There's a huge market for wireless services that tap into business-to-business applications because companies want the flexibility to rapidly order products while away from PCs so they can focus on their work," says Mark Lowenstein, executive VP of the Yankee Group's wireless practice. The maintenance, repair, and operations businesses are a natural for the PurchasingCenter.com service, he adds, largely because of the dearth of PCs in these manual, labor-intensive environments.