REAL-TIME FIELD AND ONSITE
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM
When the Health Officers
Association of California needed a real-time communications
system, they
turned to Direct Technology.
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AUTOMATION OF COMPLEX OPERATIONS
PROCESSES
The California Human
Development Corporation was spending excess time on antiquated,
paperwork-heavy processes. Direct Technology automated their operations.
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IT'S ALL ABOUT REACH
WIRELESS ACCESS IS
THE LIFEBLOOD OF OUR BUSINESS ... AND OUR SUCCESS
By Fred Michanie, CEO, Direct Technology
How do you spell PDA? You know, those little devices that are
now being physically attached to our wrists like some kind of
Borg-integrated technology from Star Trek. There are
philosophical camps everywhere – those pushing the iPhone, those
who swear Blackberry is the path to connectivity and
those who, faithful to the Microsoft gods, support CE based
Personal Data Assistants (PDA).
I was wondering, as I put my telephone in sleep mode while my
plane gets ready to take off, what is the true value of these
devices? How is this helping our company and how is it helping
our clients? I decided to start by analyzing their impact on
our company.
Direct Technology is
hyper-connected
All of our managers are given one of the pre-approved PDAs or
intelligent telephones—most of them use Blackberry and
Microsoft-based PDAs, but a few opted for the more fashionable,
but less functional (in my humble opinion) iPhone. With this
assignment comes serious responsibility—our managers must be
accessible at all times. It has become part of our culture that
e-mails are answered within 10 minutes regardless of the day of
the week and it’s the expectation is that if it’s earlier than
10 p.m. you should be connected.
Sound rough? Not sure how we got here, it’s not exactly in our
employee policy manual but we consider it part of the
professional courtesy which we respectfully grant one another. Regardless of
the circumstance – communication and data sharing is the
lifeblood of our company and these devices are the blood vessels
carrying critical nutrients from person to person ensuring our
effectiveness and ability to make informed decisions quickly.
Wireless does not
mean "weak" or "slow" anymore
Sorry laptop – I still love you. Our laptops have all been
equipped with both wireless (802.11x) and cellular access to the
Internet. VPN software ensures that we are connected to our
systems using secured encrypted communication to our files
regardless of location. Most important to me is the ability to
perform demonstrations at high-speed regardless of location.
Indeed, yesterday I did a full workflow automation and
collaboration demonstration using my integrated cellular
wireless card. It included a dizzying display of Voice-over-IP,
Video-over-IP and secured Web-based workflow —all working
together. My client was impressed, and frankly … so was I! When
did we start sending Video- and Voice-over-IP reliably over a
cellular wireless network?
Mobile technology has
been a key element in our success
I decided to look through history and find projects where Direct
Technology engineers leveraged mobile technology to help our
clients. It turns out most of our projects do, either by
providing Web-based access to mobile communities via laptops, or
providing full intelligent auditing capabilities using our
PDA-based applications. As I strolled through memory lane I
happened to stumble upon one of my favorite projects: The Child
Labor Program.
A couple of years ago, we developed a fully automated welfare
application that allowed our client to load intelligent forms
from the Internet using a secure workflow-based customized
application. The system allowed our clients to travel to farms
throughout California and enroll children into a program where
the parents would receive a subsidy in exchange. In this way,
children could get their education while the parents would
obtain critical dollars needed to pay for basic services. The
main challenge was that cellular access was not available in
some of the remote farming areas.
A very creative
solution to a very common problem
The Direct Technology engineers devised a very creative way to
solve the problem. They built the application so that it would
function in both a connected and disconnected mode. The
eligibility and enrollment functions existed both at the server
and at the local laptop level. The case managers could walk up
to an individual, fill out the application, enroll them and
print the application all while standing next to the
agricultural field. Once the laptop found itself in an area with
Internet connectivity the system would simply replicate all of
its contents with the server creating a delayed “real-time”
experience.
After much soul searching, research and questions it finally
dawned on me: “It’s all about reach.” Whether it’s required to
support a business decision, help a child go to school or save a
life, wireless access to our custom applications provide a
unique and almost ubiquitous communication highway. Couple that
with the creativity of our first-class engineers and your
application will feel like you are always within REACH, always
CONNECTED, always efficient.
to discuss mobile computing or any
other technology issues with fred, contact him at 916 787 2200 u.s. pst.
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