Web portals such as Yahoo.com, MSN.com, and so forth require a live Internet connection to provide the door to enter their various services. The wireless Internet ultimately acts as that door. The Web portal can also be a corporate intranet portal that allows the employees of the company access address books or administrative applications such as ERP reports. The wireless device is another vehicle with which to access the portal. In the book CGE&Y Guide to Wireless Enterprise Application Architecture, we cover the various concepts behind wireless portals, including exchanges for B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer), B2E (business to employee), and so forth. For now, it’s important to understand that wireless technology is a springboard for bringing the portal to life.

Sales Force Automation (SFA)
In today’s world, the sales force plays an integral role not only in marketing a company’s products to its clients, but also in building the strong business relationships that will ultimately lead to that “big deal.” The
technology that combines the power of a virtual sales team with up-to-theminute decision-making processes is known as sales force automation (SFA). SFA is arguably a great deal more than just a client relationship management tool, but for our definition, it’s a fair start. Generally, SFA applications fall into a far broader category known as customer relationship management (CRM). Sales teams are generally known as a mobile workforce, which makes them perfect candidates for leveraging mobile applications. SFA mobile applications can be as simple as a Personal Information Management (PIM) tool that manages schedules, to a sophisticated data warehouse generating monthly sales reports. We’ll talk about what some of those SFA applications are in more detail in Chapter 9.

Global Positioning Systems (GPS)
One of the more captivating mobile technologies that has been around for quite some time is the global positioning system. The government has leveraged this technology for defense systems since the 1970s. More recently, the consumer and enterprise business markets are becoming aware of this technology; it’s now being built for the everyday mobile user. A simple explanation of a global positioning system is that it provides the ability to pinpoint the exact location (within 10–50 feet) of an object carrying a GPS locator device, using satellites in outer space. An example of a GPS device is a golf ball tracking mechanism at your local golf course. Usually residing on a golf cart, a small television screen maps out the distance of a golf ball location to the final destination, the pin. It’s designed to tell the golfer the proper golf club to use in any particular situation. By the way, the golf club also has the opportunity to provide additional services to the golfer through food or golf equipment ads. When golfers reach hole 9, they receive a message asking them if they would like to order food or beverages before reaching hole 10. The food and beverages are ordered and (theoretically) waiting for them once they complete the front 9.

Taken From : Enterprise Guide to Gaining Business Value from Mobile Technologies

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