In my travels I hear quite frequently about the advisers’ need to be able use technology away from the office, either in the home, hotel lobby or elsewhere.
Historically, the majority of POS solution providers tackle this business requirement by developing systems that require the use of a laptop onto which they place all the system. From there, data is re-integrated from the remote workstation and synchronised with a central datastore for use back ‘at the ranch’. Typically, the support load for this type if architecture is heavy, with the need not only to synchronise the data between the remote machines and the central site, but also the programs that run the solution itself.
There are one or two exceptions, with some totally online solutions, or solutions that allow the ‘syphoning off’ a few clients, say 5 at a time, for use away from the confines of the company local area network, but the majority in widespread use are as described above.
With the newer web-type applications coming on stream (Web 2.0 as they are described sometimes) many of the major application development manufacturers are rushing to create environments that offer seamless, rich online applications, but allow their use offline and away from any connectivity.
There have been some major announcements over the last week with Adobe releasing Air, Google announcing Google Gears and Microsoft forging an attack on Adobe Flash/Shockwave with Silverlight coupled with its deal with Nokia and integration with the Symbian phone operating system.
These advances might help push the POS providers into developing new-style solutions that allow advisers to have their cake and eat it; it extends all the good parts of having centralised control of data with the automatic ability to use the solution offline and even on different technologies, eg PDA or Blackberry type devices.
I guess from my perspective, anything that brings the use of technology closer to the sharp end and delivers a natural, unobtrusive but functionally rich application must be a good idea – let’s hope some of these concepts find their way to your favourite software provider quickly!
