As Published In May 2004

The Wonders of Wireless
By Minda Zetlin

"The other day, I was driving back from a lunch appointment and I got an SMS [Short Message Service] alert that one of my key contacts had e-mailed me," says Rob Brown, vice president of Vital Xigns, an Oracle hosting partner that both provides Oracle Collaboration Suite software and uses it for its own business processes. "I dialed in. The voice system repeated his e-mail to me. He was having a problem with some of our software. I called him and said, 'I'll call you back in half an hour.'" Half an hour later, Brown called the client and used Web conferencing to help him download the file he needed with the correct configuration. "The time from issue to resolution was maybe an hour," he says.

"One of Oracle Collaboration Suite's most powerful elements is its ability to deliver messages wirelessly to a wide variety of devices and allow users to hear speech versions of e-mails, text messages, and other written information so that they can call in from anywhere to find out what they need to know. Even more important, it can be set to send a special alert to a cell phone or other wireless device whenever important contacts get in touch.

""I've set up Collaboration Suite to notify me if I get an e-mail from our CEO, COO, or CFO," notes Kyle Lambert, vice president, information solutions at John I. Haas. "If one of them sends me a message, my cell phone will immediately ring, letting me know which one sent the message and what the subject line is. That way I can determine whether it's something that can wait or whether I need to open a browser and take a look."

""If something urgent comes up, I don't want to have to go check a message box—I want the message to come to me," Brown says. "I don't want to have to worry about checking for e-mails, voice mails, and faxes. I want important messages to find me. That is the difference between a proactive and reactive business culture. That is a new paradigm."