“For a CIO to try to eliminate all the resistance from a
senior executive might take forever,” Barron says. “So rather
than try to get to the execs and mollify all their fears about
cost, usage and safety, we’ve gone to specific groups, engineers,
line workers, office workers, and because it’s so cheap
we’ve been able to give the devices out on ‘experimental basis.’
There’s so much value in these handheld devices and
two or three applications that they prove themselves,” he
says. “You just have to get them into the hands of the people
that actually need to use them in order to demonstrate that.”
Three innovative ways CPS staffers employ their smartphones
are as digital cameras at work sites, as GPS tracking
mechanisms, and as emergency notification receivers. In the
past, CPS might have had to dispatch a small group of “generalist”
workers to a service call to make sure the correct person
was there. Today, a single worker can visit a site, take a photo
of a damaged piece of equipment or infrastructure, and then
send it back to headquarters or the office. Then an expert diagnoses
the issue and sends along instructions to fix the problem
or dispatches the appropriate worker—who’s available
immediately via voice, e-mail, and SMS text via smartphone.
“The Magellan Program, through the use of smartphones
and other technology, has or will empower all employees,
no matter what work they perform, to become part
of the greater company’s ‘thought network’,” Barron says.
“Each person is now like a node in our network.” The company
is also seeing significant gains in supply chain efficiency
related to Magellan and the smartphone deployment, he says.
For instance, smartphones help speed up the purchase order
process, because in the past a specific person or group of people
needed to be onsite to approve orders. Now the approvers
can be practically anywhere with cellular coverage. The company’s
supply chain buyers can also visit warehouses to work
with the people who actually order parts, leading to faster
order times, and more proactive supply chain management
overall. In just one year, the time it takes to close purchasing
and procurement deals decreased by more than 65 percent.
Also, inventory levels were reduced by more than $8 million
dollars since the Magellan Program began.
Additionally, both employee and customer satisfaction
levels are up, Barron notes, due to the fact that staffers now
have more access to corporate systems and information and
feel closer to the business. Because CPS can now resolve
more customer issues with fewer processes, they’ve reduced