EIM moves beyond the Yahoo and AOL approach and adds relevance, context and presence. These mean, its an information system that goes and gets you—presence—and brings along the relevant data for discussion—orders, items etc. EIM should be a fabulous bargain for the enterprise, considering that most of the wireless devices in use today in business are actually purchased by the individual, who then bring them to work to be used in the work place.

So on -boarding in the networked solution dispenses with layers of complexity—yours and your trading partners and sets you on the path to dealing with making good links in the chain.

Putting it all together

Consistently, in our discussion groups with users, there was significant confusion about the next generation of technologies and how they applied to the problems at hand. Clearly, there is a lot more to say about the subject. So, we will. We have some excellent case studies coming up over the next few months that will demonstrate how various firms deployed and gained significant value from these next generation solutions. But in the mean time, we leave you with the future portfolio picture.

The IT architecture—from the earth to the sky. From the physical layer, real-time data

FIGURE 4

collection on the plant floor, in the warehouse, on the truck, through the blue sky-wireless world, through routing hubs and onto the system or person of choice.

(1) Interestingly both Dell and Wal-Mart do not use full boat ERP solutions from the major 4 vendors—SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards

(2) But, for world-class process capabilities like planning and CRM, it behooves the business executive to confront the IT exec on what is best for the business.

©2003 ChainLink Research, Inc.