April 30, 2007

Mobile Monday Event: It's All About Small Business

I was invited to participate in a panel discussion this evening, produced by Mobile Monday and sponsored by Samsung entitled Mobile Business 2.0 ó How Mobility Will Impact Business from the SMB to the Enterprise

I was a bit "nervous" being on the panel as I figured, this is going to be a panel all about enterprise solutions.

It wasn't.

Many of the questions from the audience, were focused on the small business market. The audience wanted to know how small businesses could leverage the complex mobile/wireless solutions for their needs.

The session, wonderfully moderated by Stephen Wellman, InformationWeek was rich in information covering various aspects of mobile technology.

My 4 minute presentation was about FRASL (yeah I made this up):

Flexible / Expandible

Return on Investment

Ask questions of your peers, competitors and vendors

Secure / Backup

Let professionals do it for you

I ended by explaining that a few years ago most small businesses would have to hire a web developer to build their web site for them. Now, small businesses can create their own web sites with turn key solutions.

Although there are many turn-key solutions for small businesses in the mobile/wireless marketplace, overall the solutions are still complex. Still, many solutions address specific aspects of what a smaller business needs. Not one solution for an 80% solution.

Fellow panelist, Jim Welch, Dexterra has a sister company which sells a turnkey solution to small businesses. You'll hear more about this in a separate article.

I also advised the audience to start small and then grow. They should not add a mobile solution to 50 PDA's before trying it out on 5.

Panelists included:

Vishy Gopalakrishnan, Mobility Partners

Stephen Woram, AuditMatic

Jim Welch, Dexterra

Sergey Fradkov, DynoPlex (his company helps businesses integrate forms in their mobile solutons)

Mark Chellis, Motorola

John Yrigoyen, NEC Unified Solutions

0 comments