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Congratulations to the winners of the BlackBerry® Corporate Application Awards! These Awards were open to BlackBerry customers who had developed applications in-house to increase their mobile workers’ productivity. There were five awards given in this contest. Four of them were to companies that developed rich Java™ clients for BlackBerry and one to a company that used the BlackBerry Browser.
- Grand Prize Winner (Java Client Application) - eircom
- Grand Prize Winner (BlackBerry Browser Application) - Apotex
- Second Place Winner (Java Client Application) - Nerds on Site (Tied)
- Second Place Winner (Java Client Application) - Scantron Service Group (Tied)
- Third Place Winner (Java Client Application) - Adidas
Project Novo by eircom
Grand Prize Winner – Java Client Application
Project Novo by eircom was designed to replace 1500 Rugged Laptops and give eircom Field Technicians the same functionality with BlackBerry devices. The main Novo Application screen is launched from the home screen and summarizes the jobs assigned to the technician as well as shows the status information, included when new jobs are pushed to the device. The entire application is optimized for wireless and integrates seamlessly with the other native BlackBerry applications. With the application, eircom has seen annual savings of €900,000, a payback period of 0.6 years and a Net Present Value (NPV) of €2.3 million.
ApoTel by Apotex
Grand Prize Winner – BlackBerry Browser Application
ApoTel by Apotex had its beginnings as an Excel spreadsheet that was updated and used by the receptionists and switchboard operators. As the company grew, it became necessary to maintain, publish and distribute a paper-based phonebook on a monthly basis. Designed and built using Active Server Pages (ASP) and a Microsoft SQL server database, ApoTel is now used by all staff, including Sales Representatives who previously had no access to this information while traveling. In the pharmaceutical industry, any delay in a project may result in the loss of market share or exclusivity, equating to millions of dollars of lost revenue. The company prides itself in providing superior customer service. Having immediate access to Apotex global contact information by using the BlackBerry ApoTel application allows for an efficient and effective phone call to keep a project on track or a customer happy.
Seed Manager by Nerds on Site
Second Place Winner (Tied) – Java Client Application
Seed Manager by Nerds on Site allows field technicians (Nerds) the ability to receive detailed service requests, inform others that they will handle a particular request (seed), then contact the client, view driving directions and map info, and add an appointment to their calendar.
The notifications, PIM integration and trackwheel shortcuts all help make the application very responsive - especially the shorthand of using the space bar as a click. The data is stored locally in databases to minimize network reliance, and to ensure offline availability.
The largest benefit is the ability to respond to client requests quickly. Since Nerds are always on site with clients, or enroute in their Nerdmobiles, they need to be able to respond to clients from anywhere. "Our clients are consistently amazed and wowed when they can say 'the Nerd called me less than a minute after I spoke to the call centre'. That translates into real bottom-line results."
Mobile Service Delivery from the Scantron Service Group
Second Place Winner (Tied) – Java Client Application
Mobile Service Delivery from the Scantron Service Group enables 170 Field Service Technicians to respond quickly to hardware service requests made by customers. Scantron created an application on BlackBerry that quickly gets tickets out to the Field Service Technicians, and then returns ticket processing information, allowing critical information to be exchanged in real time ensuring the best possible service for the customer. Integrating into their back-end AS400 and DB2/400 CRM data and application, the Mobile Service Delivery makes use of BlackBerry Push architecture and is optimized to be "light weight" over the wireless networks.
Upon implementation of the application, time spent notifying technicians of new request dropped 66% and the in-bound phone call volume from technicians dropped 18%, meaning more time was spent with customers than with Field Service technicians.
Atlas2Go from adidas
Third Place Winner – Java Client Application
Atlas2Go from adidas provides the Field Sales Representatives with real-time access to corporate inventory availability quantities, open order lookup and detail display, customized searching of adidas products, and image display of products. Furthermore, the sales representative can choose to send inventory availability results, product search results, and open order status results to their email account, allowing them to forward the reports onto their customer accounts.
Supporting the mobile BlackBerry application on the server side is a set of .NET C# applications that receive the Atlas2Go requests, perform database queries and return data back to the BlackBerry device.
By empowering sales representatives with the ability to query this information on their own via Atlas2Go, they are reducing the workload on the Customer Satisfaction (CS) representatives, as well as enabling them to close sales faster.