Dave’s Top 10 Reasons why you should NOT use Mobile Technology

By David Boos

Gone are the days when we used telephones to simply make a phone call. Who does that any more? Even in an economy where close to 10% of the population is out of work, we still find everyone making calls, texting while driving and downloading photos and movies to their phones. And we thought Dick Tracy was just a dream!

If you can imagine, there are some good reasons to only use your phone as a “telephone” and ONLY make calls on it. Here are Dave’s Top 10 Reasons why you might NOT want to use advanced mobile technology.

# 10 You might be tempted to check on the status of your website orders for the day, which would be better done at the office. Every company now has a website. According to the August 2010 Web Survey by Netcraft, there are 213,458,815 websites on the Internet today. Also, the U.S. Census Bureau recorded retail e-sales at $36.6 billion in the first quarter of 2010 and $39.7 billion in the second quarter. However, checking the status of the site itself or to see how many orders have come in for the day is something the “OTHER guys” do. That might be a distraction from your relaxing day at the beach.

# 9 You have to give a sales presentation, but realize it would be SO much easier to bring in the 120-pound projector and 27” laptop instead of projecting the presentation straight from your mobile device. The Consumer Electronics show began to debut these devices in 2009 and now the ‘field’ is full of them. Still, there is no need to actually use one. Salesmen prefer to do their presentations by printing lots of sales material, which eventually becomes the bottom liner of the litter box. Caslon, a U.S. digital printing company, estimates that “500 billion pages of marketing collateral are printed annually, equal to a total retail value of $30 billion.” That’s a lot of paper!! These tiny phone projectors are cleverly concealed in ‘phones’ from Samsung, LG and others and weigh less than 7 ounces. However, most people would rather bring in the heavier stuff and enjoy the exercise.

# 8 You could be on a business trip and need updated sales literature, but it would not be convenient to transmit the information to a mobile device when you can just Fedex it to wherever you are going. Since the world we work in is fairly static and does not change often, there is no real need to be able to update critical information or product specifications on the fly. If a new product launch or important change were to happen, those can wait to be updated in the next printing of your 27-pound catalog. Companies don’t mind that their sales team might be meeting with a critical client who would be interested; they can wait like everyone else.

# 7 You would like to know how the sales or cash receipts were for the day, but it makes more sense to just wait or call in to the office later for that information. Most accounting systems on the market today have the ability to publish data to a secure website which allows business owners and executives to have valuable information available 24/7 at their fingertips. These secure websites are accessible from a cell phone or mobile device. Keep in mind, though, it can be difficult to talk on your cell phone while looking at real-time, up-to-the-minute Key Performance Indicator data, so it’s probably best to wait until later.

# 6 There is no reason to be alerted via email that you have an important voicemail at your office. None of us get out of the office much and most of us are available to take all phone calls in our offices at the time they come in. So, why would anyone ever miss an important call? According to Wikipedia, 2.5 million employees (not including self-employed) consider home their primary place of business. With today’s technology, should they have an important message waiting for them at the office, it’s easy to set up prompts and alerts to your cell phone or mobile device to keep the busy executive in touch, but of course that, too, can wait.

# 5 Who would need to be able to Instant Message with the office concerning an important issue that has just come up? We all know the dangers of “texting while driving,” so the best way to avoid that would be not to have a mobile device with that capability. Despite the fact that extremely important issues can come up throughout the day, after office hours and on weekends, those messages can wait patiently until the next day when we are comfortably back in our office. Critical alerts concerning large orders, payables that are approaching discount dates or due dates, inventory stock that is getting low or accounts receivable going past due are all examples of things that might be important, but can wait.

# 4 And who would need to connect to his office to place an order or check on a product without booting up a laptop? Sales and business executives who still actually spend time in the offices of their customers would not benefit from having the ability to quickly check on the status of a product during those meetings. The fact that product and service data can easily be made available to a mobile device for use on a secure connection over the phone or WIFI lines should not get in the way of calling the office, talking to Mary in Customer Service who then needs to call Bob, the Warehouse Manager, who then has to radio Frank to get on his forklift to find out if you have that widget in stock. Besides, the nice thing about mobile phones is the office can always call you back in an hour or so when they find the answer!

# 3 Why would it be useful to have access to flight, weather or traffic information if you are heading out for an appointment? They will understand if you are late. With the use of the Internet today most business transactions are conducted using Voice Over IP (Internet Protocol) phones and Webcams rather than in face-to-face meetings. However, for those unlucky souls who must still burn gasoline or jet fuel to get to meetings, there would be no benefit to accessing data relevant to their travel. The Weather Channel, Traffic information and airline schedules would only increase the stress level of the traveler by notifying them that they are going to be late.

# 2 You might be out of town when your daughter takes her first steps, but it would be better to wait and see that on your BetaMax Video tape machine when you get back. Just when we thought the Japanese were the only ones traveling everywhere with cameras around their necks, along comes a device that can shoot both photos and videos, and everyone seems to have one! According to Wikipedia, approximately 6.4 million iPhones are active in the U.S. alone. But, what would we need them for? Whether it’s taking photos of a new prospect’s facility, an innovative product idea, or being able to see your daughter’s first steps live and in “real time,” most of us would rather carry a 35mm camera or camcorder along on our daily travels.

# 1 A prospective customer might send you that signed proposal in email and you would definitely not want to be bothered if you are not in the office. In this economy, orders are coming in so fast that we cannot keep up with them anyway and certainly that large order from the prospect you’ve been working on for the last year would just be lost in the shuffle, so who cares? The accounting systems of the past required hours and hours of data entry and the duplication of entry into multiple systems just to process a single order. In contrast, with the systems available today, data is entered once and then follows an automated ‘workflow’ immediately to the proper department(s). Naturally, incoming orders would only be a distraction. No one would want to be bothered with getting an alert and having to look at his mobile device for that!