Manufacturer: Apple, Cupertino, CA
Product name: PowerBook 540c
Weight: 7.3 pounds
Battery life: 3 to 6 hours
Phone: 800-538-9696
Manufacturer: Compaq, Houston, TX
Product name: Contura Aero 4/25
Weight: 3.5 pounds
Battery life: 6 hours
Phone: 800-345-1518
Manufacturer: IBM, Somers, NY
Product name: ThinkPad 755C
Weight: 7.4 pounds
Battery life: 3 to 8 hours
Phone: 800-772-2227
Manufacturer: NEC, Boxborough, MA
Product name: Versa E Series DX4/75
Weight: 6.6 pounds
Battery life: 3 hours
Phone: 800-632-4636
Manufacturer: Toshiba, Irvine, CA
Product name: Portege T3400CT
Weight: 5.4 pounds
Battery life: 3 to 6 hours
Phone: 800-344-3445
RESOURCES
How to Get Help with Sales Automation
There are literally hundreds of sales-automation software packages out there -- and there are just as many sales-automation-related consulting firms, publications, seminars, and conferences. What follows is a list of resources to help you in your sales-automation process.
Information Systems Marketing Inc. (202-363-8996), a consulting firm that specializes in sales and marketing automation. The company also publishes The User Guide to Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing Automation, which covers the pros and cons of off-the-shelf sales software packages and provides extensive practical advice.
Sales Automation Association (313-278-5655), an organization that provides information on seminars, guides, and consulting services.
Sales & Marketing Executives International (800-999-1414), an organization that provides information on local chapters and conferences.
Power Selling (800-765-7615), a conference sponsored by Sales and Marketing Management magazine.
Mobile World (508-470-3880), a conference sponsored by Digital Consulting Inc.
Wireless Help
If you're convinced that wireless communications are just what you need to automate your sales force effectively, you don't have to go it alone. Below are some major communications providers and consultants who specialize in helping companies set up wireless communications.
Communications providers:
ARDIS Wireless Network (a joint venture between IBM and Motorola)
Lincolnshire, Ill.
800-662-5328, extension 900
RAM Mobile Data
Woodbridge, N.J.
908-602-5500
RadioMail Corp.
San Mateo, Calif.
415-286-7800
Consultants:
Global Data Inc.
Rich Tegge
Clearwater, Fla.
813-530-7000
ACT Inc.
Veronica Williams
South Orange, N.J.
201-761-1860
Wireless Computing Associates
Bill Freza
Yardley, Pa.
215-321-0929
IDEAS YOU CAN USE
Hardware
Palmtops on Wheels
In July 1993 Vicki Whiteford was visiting a friend in San Francisco who showed her a palmtop computer. "I'd never seen one before," she says. "I went out and bought five."
Whiteford is the CEO of $1-million All-Ways Courier Inc., a Los Angeles courier service that warehouses and delivers parts for major computer and appliance companies. Her drivers carry the one-pound Hewlett Packard 95LX computer with them on their routes so they can communicate with headquarters: they can announce their location, get an assignment, and press a key preprogrammed for a quick response.
Radio Mail, the wireless electronic-mail service with which the HP palmtops are equipped, makes all that possible. Radio Mail provides All-Ways with the software and the Ericsson GE Mobidem radio-modem (twice the length of a cigarette pack), which together let drivers send and receive text messages over the airways. Whiteford can keep her customers -- repair people who service appliances and computers in homes and offices -- apprised of delivery times.
In 1993, at $1,000 for each unit, Whiteford bought 5 of the HP 95LX palmtops. Less than a year later, the price of the palmtop dropped by 50%, so she bought 10 more for the price of the original 5. She pays Radio Mail $89 a month per unit for the wireless electronic-mail service it provides. But the savings are clear. Her 15 drivers, equipped with wireless units, complete about 45 more jobs per day, at an average profit of $30 per job. Cellular-phone bills have dropped by hundreds of dollars a month. And Whiteford has been able to double the size of the business without adding a second dispatcher.
-- J.dJ.
Telecommunications
The Big Fax Payback
Ron Becht, director of product marketing at Hello Direct, a $30-million San Jose, Calif., company that sells headsets and other telecommunications equipment, knows that his customers want to be armed with information before they're ready to make a buying decision. So the company has established a fax-back system to get product data out to interested customers.
Since April 1994 Hello Direct has been using Fast Fax, a PC-based fax-back system from V*Channel, a systems integrator in Santa Clara, Calif., to fax information automatically to customers, who punch in their requests using a touch-tone phone. The software interprets the requests and faxes out the information.
Costs for such systems have dropped dramatically, especially over the last year. Hello Direct paid $10,000 for a system that can handle 2,000 requests a day. Annual operating costs add up to another $3,000.
In its first three months, the system sent out more than 3,100 documents, with about 200 callers opting to leave their names and addresses on the system's voic
