THE CHALLENGE
Robert West, the
manager of information technology for the City of Killeen, became involved in
the city government's search for wireless technology solutions based on a well
defined challenge: to reduce the costs of cell phone minutes used to check
messages and to identify a solution that made it cheaper for city employees to
connect for messages while traveling. West needed a solution that would work
well with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook so that employees could check their
email. He also was interested in testing the mobile wireless solution with
Track-It!, a help-desk application from Blue Ocean Software that his IT
department uses for work assignments.
THE
SOLUTION
The City chose to use
Captaris Infinite Mobile Delivery as their data access software and AT&T
Wireless as their wireless service provider. A six-month pilot program was
structured for 23 city employees to use Infinite Mobile Delivery. All nine
members of the city's IT department are in the pilot in addition to the city
manager, the city attorney, the public information officer and the department
directors for police, fire, public works, streets, volunteer services, and
parks and recreation. All users have Internet-enabled phones for directly
accessing their Microsoft Outlook information. "I like that the Captaris
product is not device proprietary," said West. "I'm able to use my Palm Pilot
as well as my phone." Infinite Mobile Delivery web access is available to all
users as a back-up when they are in areas without cell service.
Hillary Shine, the
only public information officer for the city, loves the functionality of
Infinite Mobile Delivery because she must constantly be available for news
incidents involving any city department. "I love this! I recently took a
two-day personal trip to Colorado. There were two news-making incidents that
happened during that trip, so I was on email the whole time. I was able to
manage it much more conveniently," said Shine. "Even at home, it is great. I
have to review all news that goes out from our police department. When I have
to read a statement at three in the morning, this is terrific."
Three months into the
city's six-month pilot program, West reported, "Infinite Mobile Delivery is
well worth the investment. The preliminary numbers show the majority of users
are saving quite a bit compared to their previous phone expenses. The software
shows a potential for an average 15 to 25 percent dollar savings each month in
time with use of the data side of the phone instead of using cell minutes"
The city is saving
further on the additional use of Infinite Mobile Delivery for the IT staff.
The Blue Ocean help desk software used by the IT department generates a work
order ticket and sends the information in an email to the appropriate
technical person. Using Infinite Mobile Delivery, the tech staff member can
access email and read the text of the work order within the email.
"Our technicians
don't have to come in to get their next work order, so we're saving time and
money when they don't have to drive back to the office," West said. "We are
not tracking time savings right now. We are tracking dollars, since phone
costs initiated this pilot. Eventually, we will be tracking labor savings
also."
West is pleased with
Infinite Mobile Delivery and envisions pilots programs to use it in more ways
within city government. He sees advantages in being able to use the Infinite
Mobile Delivery Voice Connector, so he will recommend a test of that in the
next fiscal year budget. He also believes the streets and water departments
could benefit from mobile wireless access to work orders in the same way as
his IT department does. With an Infinite Open Data Connector and Infinite
Mobile Delivery, those departments could access their information that is
stored in IBM databases.
Other government
offices are taking notice of the efficiencies being realized by the City of
Killeen's move to take advantage of new technology. The school district, which
is a separate entity from city government, has sent representatives to look at
the City's implementation. "We took a leadership role with this product,"
noted West. "We were the first in the area to implement the use of this type
of data technology."
Government's Search for Wireless Technology Solution
