Friday, November 15, 2002
Coca Cola Saves "a ton of money" Using Pocket PC
Posted by Andy Sjostrom in "DEVELOPER" @ 01:47 AM
http://www.devbuzz.com/content/zinc_visual_ce_pg1.asp
A recent article on DEVBUZZ features Coca Cola and how the company developed a sales automation solution for Pocket PC using Visual CE from Syware. Given the fact that the next generation mobile development tools from Microsoft are integrated with Visual Studio .NET and thereby no longer free, it is great to see that options do exist at different price points. However, I doubt price of the tools was an issue for Coca Cola. Instead, I believe Syware Visual CE won because of the low thresholds to getting started.
"Since suitable off-the-shelf applications were not available, the company needed to develop a customized solution. The task fell to Billy Wang, Business Development Manager for Coca Cola's Southern California division. Utilizing SYWARE's Visual CE, he was able to develop a contact management application for the Pocket PC that interacts with the division's desktop customer management system. Visual CE offers a highly intuitive drag and drop development environment that allows users to create customized forms and databases without previous programming experience. ... "Using Visual CE, we've been able to make that $500 handheld device work like a $4000 PC," says Wang. "With over 80 salespeople in our division alone, you can get an idea of the savings."
A recent article on DEVBUZZ features Coca Cola and how the company developed a sales automation solution for Pocket PC using Visual CE from Syware. Given the fact that the next generation mobile development tools from Microsoft are integrated with Visual Studio .NET and thereby no longer free, it is great to see that options do exist at different price points. However, I doubt price of the tools was an issue for Coca Cola. Instead, I believe Syware Visual CE won because of the low thresholds to getting started.
"Since suitable off-the-shelf applications were not available, the company needed to develop a customized solution. The task fell to Billy Wang, Business Development Manager for Coca Cola's Southern California division. Utilizing SYWARE's Visual CE, he was able to develop a contact management application for the Pocket PC that interacts with the division's desktop customer management system. Visual CE offers a highly intuitive drag and drop development environment that allows users to create customized forms and databases without previous programming experience. ... "Using Visual CE, we've been able to make that $500 handheld device work like a $4000 PC," says Wang. "With over 80 salespeople in our division alone, you can get an idea of the savings."
