Many common business drivers in today's enterprise environment include tactical issues such as the reduction of operational expenses; improving operational efficiencies; and increasing the timeliness and accuracy of data collection and dissemination. It's also important to recognize that placing timely information in the hands of individuals who need it dramatically facilitates and improves their contribution.

Concurrently, many strategic factors are at play as well. Specifically, the ability to stay closer to your customers, vendors, prospects and partners is highly prized. Perhaps the most critical strategic advantage to be gained, though, is the ability to efficiently and effectively capture operational metrics for quick, accurate and informed strategic decision making. Properly utilized, today's simple, yet sophisticated handheld systems can provide the comprehensive technology platform to enable your organization to maximize these tactical and strategic benefits.

As competition increases in a wide array of marketplaces and companies seek to achieve a competitive advantage, one common issue is the reduction of costs without impacting the level of service or quality. Handheld devices provide many types of organizations with an ideal platform for the capture and dissemination of information. By leveraging the compact nature of Palm handhelds and their ever-increasing ease of use, companies can cost-effectively equip large segments of the enterprise with them to meet their specific business needs and provide mission-critical role-specific and job-specific information. Considering that the average cost of a handheld device is about one tenth that of an average business PC, it's finally feasible for organizations to put such devices into the hands of field and mobile personnel who have previously been limited to an archaic paper-based system at best. Additionally, the use of such powerful and flexible handheld devices reduces data entry errors because secure handheld units linked directly to databases can replace manual forms.

Traditional corporate solutions have included the collection of data from field or mobile personnel via paper forms, fax, or telephone. Also, due to the high cost and complexities of traditional notebook computers, the conventional computer has proven ineffective or prohibitively expensive for the collection of large amounts of data and dissemination to and from a mobile workforce. Palm devices present an ideal solution to this dilemma and offer a cost-effective solution to data capture that also increases reliability and integrity of corporate data. With the improvements in wide-area data synchronization and other enterprise-level tools, Palm handhelds can now be reasonably used to capture data in the field and transmit it to a centralized data storage facility for analysis, processing, and further dissemination.

By allowing managers and teams to more quickly and accurately communicate information across a widespread workforce, productivity can be greatly increased while critical decision-making time can be dramatically reduced. The ability to pull many data points together in a short period of time and then to be able to access and analyze them, wherever management may be located, can increase overall decision-making skills and provide a critical strategic advantage.