Mobile personalities

What could wireless technology do for you?

Technology is only as good as the benefit it brings to your business. People are using the combination of technology and new ways of working to do better business.

Road warriors
Whether it is salesmen on the road, an executive visiting different sites or someone working from home two days a week, everybody seems to spend less and less time in a traditional office. Using wireless networks, people can stay connected to the internet and company servers at home, in different offices or using paid-for Wi-Fi hotspots in public places like motorway service stations or airports.

Corridor warriors
Imagine you have a presentation to give. Your team has spent days getting everything right and you have the perfect PowerPoint deck ready to go. You're on the way to the boardroom with your laptop and one of your colleagues runs up to say that he found a mistake. No time to go back to the office and change it. Luckily, the building is equipped with a wireless network. You get to the boardroom, switch on your computer and pull the corrected spreadsheet off the server.

Day-extenders
Normally the train journey to and from work is dead time. Most of the time you're standing and even if you could sit down, you wouldn't be able to connect to the office network to do anything useful. Not any more. With a Pocket PC, you can download documents in Microsoft Word or Excel format to read and edit anywhere you like. Not only that, but you can use a mobile phone or data card to connect to the office and pick up your email. Now you can use the dead time on the train to get a head start on the day so that you can spend your office hours more productively.

Time-shifters
Increasingly people want to time shift their day because of children or rush hours - or maybe it's because their customers happen to be reachable during the evening. Being able to work whenever and wherever improves personal productivity and company competitiveness. Remote access to email and company data using Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 and suitably equipped laptops or pocket computers will let you and your employees do this.

Flexible workers
Sometimes people are simply more productive when they work from home. Sometimes, people want to work from home for family reasons. Either way, it's important to give people the right technology they need to work flexibly. Two features that are built into Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 can help: Outlook Web Access which lets you access company email from any computer with an internet connection and Remote Web Workplace which gives people access to the company intranet (a website that is only available to staff) and their office computers. With a broadband internet connection and a laptop, you have the same capabilities at home that you have in the office.

What next?