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March 26, 2001

Handheld Management Can Be A Handful

Companies need carefully crafted security, support, and training policies to stay in control

By Dave Johnson

Illustration by James O'Brien

More on wireless:

sidebar: Answer Policy Questions Now To Avoid Problems Later

IT Managers Seek Basic Wireless Commerce (1/22/01)

Wireless Gadgets Go The Distance For IT Executives (12/11/00)

InternetWeek: Hands-On (3/7/01)

ombardier Aerospace Inc. needed an efficient way to gauge the quality of service it provides its clients, and conventional paper surveys weren't going to fly. The Dallas executive air service, with a fleet of more than 100 aircraft, caters to wealthy executives and routinely departs on four hours' notice, handling all the logistics associated with a flight to deliver a seamless travel experience. Its survey process had to be equally streamlined.

"These are individuals who don't have a lot of time for standard paper forms or interviews," says Bombardier manager of owner services John Maxfield. "We needed a system that was very minimal in terms of time and effort."

The answer? The company hired nHand Solutions Inc., a business-solutions integrator that specializes in handheld technology, to deploy a fleet of wireless Palm VII handhelds. Passengers use the Palms to complete a short questionnaire at the end of each flight. Every day, the data from the PDAs is transmitted wirelessly to Bombardier's database, where it can be evaluated the next day.

Like many businesses, Bombardier has embraced devices such as the Palm, Pocket PC, and BlackBerry. In other cases, handhelds are working their way into companies not from the top down but from the bottom up--by way of employees who see the value of using PDAs on the job. For these users, the handheld is a tool that makes them more productive. "It changes the way people work," Dave Werizak, VP of marketing for Research In Motion Ltd., says of the company's BlackBerry and similar wireless devices. "People used to check E-mail when they went home in the evening. Now they can do that when they have downtime during the day. It gives them time back to be more effective without costing them more personal time."

There's obvious value in equipping users with PDAs. But at what cost? "Most companies aren't yet ready to embrace handheld devices. It's something they're being pushed to do by their own employees," says Ken Dulaney, a Gartner research analyst. "It's like the revolution we had with the PC. They had mainframes, they had thin clients--terminals--out there, and life was good. Then they saw this invasion of PCs that wasn't planned, and it took them a number of years to get a handle on it."

Stan Yarborough, a consultant with North Highland, agrees: "If people are bringing handhelds into the office, often there's no planning, no particular business requirement for them to be there, and they tend to go ignored or unsupported by IT."

Or their support requires Herculean efforts. Take Martin Progressive, a New York consulting firm. Its IT organization is grappling with the task of supporting the broad array of handhelds its users bring into the workplace, evaluating their applicability and supportability one device at a time. While IT is committed to working with these users no matter what their devices of choice, the lack of a coherent handheld policy makes it tough going.

The company equips users who request PDAs with Palm devices, but it doesn't shut the door on other handhelds. "We deal with the never-ending cycle of churning and upgrading of units, as well as executives who always want the latest and greatest," says Martin Progressive senior engineer Ian Fischer. "Sometimes I've never even heard of these devices and I'm forced to support them because the people who ask to use them are actually paying my salary."