Making a business case for mobility
Evaluating Software for Mobility
To some extent, you should evaluate software for mobility the same way you should evaluate any
other potential software implementation. A lot of this is common sense. Know your business
requirements and check functionality against them. Explore fine points to the extent possible in
advance of making a selection. Keep your mind open to new products and developments but
don’t strive to be bleeding edge with your technology. Know your vendor suppliers and assess
them for ease of business relationship and long term stability in the marketplace.
What’s unique about evaluating software for a mobile AM/FM implementation? I would contend
that the range of business applications for the software may be more diverse than for a more
traditional software application. Mobility may duplicate office AM/FM used for design, provide
field data acquisition capabilities, push out view only map books to the field, incorporate GPS
locations with data capture, provide data correction and update capabilities, provide data for
working outages. If you’re trying to incorporate some or all of this functionality, bear in mind that
the mobility software may have to change to accommodate changes in any of the office
technology and change will likely be constant.
One approach to software analysis is Kepner-Tregoe Decision Analysis. Decision Analysis is
particularly good when it is unclear which is the correct choice from a number of alternatives. The
analysis process assists you in clarifying purpose, evaluating alternatives, assessing risks and
benefits, and ultimately making a decision. The methodology provides a common language and
approach that removes decision making from the realm of personal preference. It provides
organized ways of applying critical skills to an issue.
The basic format for a Decision Analysis table is to first list your Must requirements and evaluate
each product as Go or No Go with respect to the musts. A No Go evaluation will immediately
eliminate a product from the running. Remaining products will also be evaluated against your
Want requirements and given weighted scores. You can use these ratings to determine the most
appropriate products.
We had a constantly changing array of Musts and Wants to feed into the evaluation process.
This was not helpful for getting on with Decision Analysis but did serve to highlight the issue of
the volatility of mobility project champions and issues. We did have good team consensus
around using the Decision Analysis process for software evaluation.
Some Good Experiences with Deploying Mobility
I’ve had the opportunity to interview AM/FM leadership associated with early adoption of mobility
at gas and electric utilities. Some distinctive patterns have emerged respective to the business
needs of each utility type. We have discussed the possibility of unique qualities associated with
early adoption of mobility vs. more recent adoption but to date we can only speculate on what
these differences might be.
In one of the successful early mobility electric utility sites, improved customer service drove the
needs for the application. Planners were able to successfully present a business case with this
slant to their management. Next in importance was keeping the facilities database current,
another issue of great concern to management. Continuous support from senior management
was considered one of the critical success factors at this site. There was little shift in staffing or
business drivers associated with the project. This continuity allowed the technical staff to be very
focused on the project and to “just do it.” They were also able to resist the temptation to go big,
instead remaining small and hands on with building the application.
The early mobility gas utility site emphasized regulatory compliance and safety as most critical
issues. They were able to obtain early buy in for mobility implementation from upper management based on these business needs. It was possible to quantify savings in costs of
printing paper maps (with a good sized town paying for its annual software lease in the cost
savings from one set of maps). Mobility issues were somewhat unique due to the clear business
need for field staff to have access to the data. As with the electric site, very simple technology
solutions (for example, nightly downloads and uploads by wireless LAN) proved very satisfactory
for the field staff and were easy to support.
Given all the above, is mobility a hard sell at business case time? Yes, because no matter how
important mobility is to upper management, so are many other projects. Increasingly, IT projects
must compete for funding with other projects and be subjected to formal competitive evaluation
processes. Projected cost savings remain a touchy issue, especially as more businesses are
asking project sponsors to commit to these savings in advance in their budgets. Some
successful implementations did not attempt to quantify savings in timeliness of maps in trucks,
data integrity, FTE reduction due to automation, or labor saved in not duplicating processes. Yet
in other proposed mobility projects, it was possible to show savings from quicker billing that more
than offset the technology costs.
