Belgravium Middleware solution : The Mobile Data Portal™

Modern businesses feed upon mission-critical data. Ideally this data is delivered in real-time or near real-time from wherever the employee is situated. The world is moving towards mobile devices which employees can carry easily and which give them a huge degree of independence, yet let their company know of their whereabouts and activities. The net result is that employees and clients are happier – and key corporate data reaches the organisation in a timely manner, providing significant competitive advantage. Easier said than done? Not if you utilise The Mobile Data Portal™ from Belgravium.

Mobile computing devices find a use in almost every walk of life, whether it be for stock control within a large warehouse, providing mobility of patient data in a hospital, enabling field service engineers to better fault-find and order replacement parts…….and countless other applications. Public and private sector organizations generally recognize the value of equipping their employees with mobile devices that can directly improve productivity, the difficulty often comes in connecting the data captured remotely with the organization’s key business-driver software packages at the ‘back-end’. These back-end software packages are often highly complex and powerful systems such as ERP, CRM, WMS and Service Management and represent a significant capital investment.

To ensure 100% utilization of the software’s functionality, when all employees are in a fixed location, can be challenge enough. Adding the complexity of mobile working and remote communication can be a nightmare but often this is a necessary business requirement. Take the example of a warehouse operation. Real-time radio technology is now commonplace within a modern warehouse, allowing total visibility of goods throughout all key activities from goods-in through to dispatch. It’s with dispatch that the problems start. Often the goods are loaded onto the vehicle and then real-time visibility is lost. The commercial consequences can be significant. Late delivery can be catastrophic to the next element in the supply chain and, ultimately, customers will be dissatisfied. Moreover, in the modern business World there is an expectation from customers that a producer should be able to provide total traceability throughout the manufacturing and supply chain.

Often it can appear that the technical challenges to providing total visibility are almost insurmountable, as if an impenetrable solid wall has been placed between the mobile worker and the back-end system located at corporate HQ. The aim of the Belgravium Mobile Data Portal™ is simple. Our middleware product will provide you with universal data connectivity and transparency , whatever your back-end system, whatever your core operating platform, whatever your communication medium, whatever your development tools, whatever your front-end data capture device…………’whatever’ anything !

The manner in which we achieve such comprehensive and total connectivity is, in reality, highly complex and based directly upon our decades of acquired experience in the data capture sector. Many man years of development work have gone into the creation of The Mobile Data Portal™. For our customers, however, the process is far from painful. Obviously, we will need to consult closely with you to determine your overall business objective and the specifics of the data input / output that you require but thereafter it’s over to us. We will use The Mobile Data Portal™ to provide you with a turnkey system that meets your data flow requirement exactly.

So, what is The Mobile Data Portal™ ?

Front-End application software – this can be literally any application. It may be an existing application but, if it doesn’t already exist, Belgravium or an authorised partner can supply or develop it. A huge suite of existing software applications is already available, including packages for fuel delivery, van sales, voice-controlled stock control, mobile point of sale, vehicle tracking , maintenance and inspection…..and a whole lot more.

Front-end mobile data capture devices – the application software can reside on any form of mobile device from a fixed in-cab unit, through to a rugged PDA and even a mobile phone. Dependent upon form factor, these devices can invariably be equipped with a range of data capture utilities including (but not limited to) bar code scanners, RFID readers, cameras & imagers, voice input, GPS transceivers etc. All of these types of devices are manufactured by Belgravium, which provides a further level of reassurance.

Communication Highway – these days there are a multitude of methods for point-to-point connection of mobile devices to a central fixed facility (or for communication between the devices themselves). Most offer true real-time performance. These include GPRS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for real-time connectivity and physical connectivity via such as USB, Ethernet and RS232.

Transport and Database Layer – this is where we have to get a little technical. We will, via database mapping, take the appropriate data from your back-end system and place it on to a, platform-independent, SQL server. This server can operate under any platform that you, the client, chooses be it Windows, Linux, Unix or AS400. Using industry standard development tools, such as PHP, VXML and Ajax, Belgravium have developed a suite of intelligent connectivity applications that allow seamless connection between the SQL server and the remote mobile data capture devices, via whatever method of transmission is adopted within the ‘communication highway’. These applications are, in themselves, based upon a range of different ‘server’ technologies including web, voice and batch platforms.

Back-End Business-Driver Software – at the heart of most modern businesses there is invariably a software package, or suite of packages, that are governing key commercial processes and functions. The exact nature of software adopted obviously varies according to the size of the organization and their business sector. Typical business-driver software includes ERP, Financial Management, Warehouse Management, Service Management, Customer Relations Management etc. The ‘open systems’ nature of SQL ensures easy and rapid two-way connection between the back-end software and the dedicated SQL server and ultimately (via the connectivity applications) two-way connectivity between back-end software and front-end mobile devices. In essence, that’s the critical component. If you’re not an IT practitioner then ignore the bits in the middle, or ask your IT team to validate that our methodology is sound ! We’ve got decades of experience in connecting disparate IT systems and platforms to mobile devices and we know our Mobile Data Portal™ product works.