Jan. 28, 2014 Concerns with Smartphones in the Field and on the Sales Floor rfg perspective
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- Experture and Robert Frances Group
  Jan. 28, 2014
Concerns with Smartphones in the Field and on the Sales Floor RFG Perspective: The relative low cost and widespread availability of mobile devices is delivering improved visibility and management across all industries and bringing converged solutions that can potentially eliminate the need for redundant, single-purpose offerings. The farming industry, previously too niche to have meaningful industry-specific offerings, is a good example of these advancements. New apps help optimize profits and keep track of everything from livestock care to operations coordination. Likewise, new products for payment processing and invoicing allow retail facilities to use smartphones instead of expensive, specialized hardware. While the evolving landscape enables faster collaboration, better insight, and the potential elimination of redundant devices, companies need to take a measured, security-minded approach to integrating solutions into their environments. Farming Advances The farming industry, dairy included, is experiencing the same set of disruptive technology changes affecting other industries. Namely, those are mobile, cloud, social, and analytics. Mobile apps range in the value provided from those that aggregate dairy-related data from public sources (such as Dairy Source and Dairy Market Central), optimize reproductive performance (Fertility Improvement Profit Calculator), and reduce heat stress (Purina Cool Cow). Higher-value apps track and manage cow and field events (Pro Dairy Event, Pro Milk Solids, and Pro Grass Rotation). Others keep track of nearly all relevant farm operations (F-Track Live) with cross-user sharing and cloud-based storage and offline synchronization. Long-established players like Dairy Records Management Systems (DRMS) are getting into the action as well by extending functionality (PCDART) to handheld devices (PocketDairy Android). While most applications are available across Apple iOS and Google Android platforms, there are some apps that are either Apple or Android only. App availability for BlackBerry and Windows Phone platforms is sparing at best as BlackBerry is dying while Windows Phone third-party app support is paltry. There may prove to be some place for Windows Phone in the future, but companies should expect Android and Apple to remain the primary devices for the foreseeable future. Should apps be developed for Windows Phone, those will arrive only after their Android and iOS counterparts and may take months (possibly) or years (likely) to arrive. Removing Redundancy Convergence is affecting the dairy market but not to the degree where there should or will be a significant amount of device abandonment in the short- or mid-term. The extension of key services is being delivered to smartphones as an augmentation to other devices rather than as a replacement in most cases. This is happening because of the widespread availability and usage of smartphones by all user types; however, the roles of and places for specialized hardware is not going anywhere soon. An evaluation of inventory, sales and invoice, and the retail storefront examples shows why this is the case. Portable sales and invoicing is a boon on mobile devices as users do not need to wait to return to their trucks or the home office to generate new purchase orders. Users already provided with notebook computers (ruggedized or regular) would be able to use their personal or corporate smartphones for sales and invoicing; however, some required functionality (an updated delivery schedule, as an example) may not be available for the smartphone. Thus, the smartphone would add to, rather than outright replace, the notebook in the field at this time. Companies will need to deal with the added complexities of device deployment, management, security, payment, etc. as well. Smartphones will also inherently suffer from issues relative to rapid battery drain and mobile carrier wireless access. Much of the same goes for inventory management as a degree of compromise is required to implement solutions and they may not be a full replacement for existing offerings. Inventory management may come in the form of simple lookup and delivery, bar code scanning, and/or RFID. Lookup and delivery via smartphone can be excellent assuming the right mobile app and enablement is provided. Bar code scanning works well though phone cameras are somewhat more prone to damage than specialized scanning devices. RFID scanning (enabled through phone near field communication (NFC)) can be complicated as only a subset of smartphones have RFID (no Apple devices are RFID-enabled) and the employed applications must be compatible with the smartphone's implementation. Of course, all of these usage types will contribute to rapid battery drain. One will need to determine if typical usage requires extended/replaceable batteries and/or a simple and multi-device means of charging. Issues of deployment, user rights, security, breakage, and loss must also be addressed. Applicability The use of systems connecting to smartphones has security implications for which plans must be in place that align with corporate security requirements. Companies will need to decide whether smartphones will be provided and owned by the business, the user, or a combination of the two. Bring your own device (BYOD) smartphone policies are increasing in popularity but frequently have higher costs and security concerns that when devices are entirely corporate owned. Point of sale (POS) systems require the purchase of specialized dongles that work on select devices and may break due to frequent connection/disconnection and how well the devices are looked after. Conversely, specialized card readers attached to cash registers may last for a decade or more as it is their design intent. The same holds true for handheld scanners that are designed for harsher environments. Device and transmission security are also concerns. Device security, including the use of passwords or TouchID (Apple iPhone 5S), should be required and enforced on all devices with access to sensitive customer and corporate data. Abilities for centralized security including user permissions and device wiping are also a must. Companies using Wi-Fi for the transmission of credit card authorization and customer information management within the enterprise should use both WPA2 security and a virtual private networking (VPN) to maximize protection. Smartphones as WorkhorsesWhile smartphones have seen some success in the retail environment, most corporations choose to keep their investments in traditional POS systems, as the need for cash and check handling remains critical. Solutions designed to replace these older systems using smartphones and tablets (Square, Paypal, others), typically require a dongle and most work with both iOS and Android. Transaction costs for these new payment processors tends to be higher than traditional ones, and users have voiced security-related concerns when it comes to these types of solutions. These solutions will be far more pervasive within the next five years; however, there is a great deal of market and technology consolidation that will need to happen for this to become wider spread. RFG POV: There are a few manufacturers that are designing ruggedized smartphones but the options are few and may require compromise. Apple, for instance, is unlikely to offer a ruggedized phone or license iOS to a ruggedized manufacturer. Ruggedized Android devices tend to be very expensive and run older hardware. In the long run, RFG expects specialized equipment manufacturers to embrace Android (and perhaps Windows Phone) as a base for future devices that may offer some smartphone capability rather than smartphone manufacturers offering a far greater selection of great ruggedized hardware. Additional relevant research is available. Interested readers should contact Client Services to arrange further discussion or interview with Mr. Adam Braunstein, Principal Analyst and Research Director. 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