Mobility Event Review

It started off as a pretty standard corporate event – well organised, but a little stiff.

There was an introduction from John Petrovich and then Gary Andrews from Telstra gave a 5 minute overview of what Microsoft and Telstra were doing in partnership.  That’s not to say that Telstra and Microsoft are trying to stiff anyone, far from it – in fact their partnership has some really compelling features, particularly the online services (Business Productivity Online Services or BPOS).  (For those of you who might not know BPOS provides ‘cloud’ versions of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications and Live Meeting.)  It’s just that the Telstra presentation followed the age old formula of PowerPoint slides and everyone reading ahead of the presenter.

Then slowly things started to change.  John came back up to introduce Martin Coyle and the first clue that something different was going to happen was Martin took to the stage accompanied by a blast of “The Only Way is Up” by Yazz – very funky!  After a nervous start, Martin started to get into stride and used some rhetorical questions to engage the audience.  He then paused, to gain attention as he strode across the stage and then started to tell a personal story, which I won’t go into here, but it was captivating and held the audience spellbound.  Martin fairly seamlessly created a link from his human interest story to the theme of the presentation, “Get Smart, Get More, Get Mobile,” and from that point on, he had us!

When Martin asked if it was OK to entertain everyone a little rather than lecturing us, there was a resounding “Yes” from the crowd.  He then got us all up introducing ourselves to as many people as we could, while some high energy music played.  All I can remember is the smiles on everyone’s faces as we charged around the room furiously shaking hands with each other.

Finally, we got into the content which was based around some of the general business/productivity issues we all face were highlighted.  Interestingly we looked at a case study of Bunzl that was accompanied by video footage of Geoff Reid, their IT Manager.  The video showed Geoff open and honestly discussing his specific business problems that were addressed through mobility.  Martin then took us through the 10 steps to creating a first class mobile application solution, which was further punctuated with video comments from Geoff Reid emphasising the importance of each point.

Martin read the mood of everyone and decided to raise the energy levels again, this time by having us play ‘Pass the Parcel’ – yes you read that correctly, Pass the Parcel.  I have to say it was fun and certainly more entertaining than asking some random questions.  One chap, not a native of Australia, got so excited when the music stopped and he had the parcel; he wanted to keep unwrapping and had to be restrained after the first layer!  It turned out the lucky ‘winner’ got a brand new smartphone, an HTC SNAP, donated by Telstra.

John Petrovich returned to the stage and gave us a demonstration of the actual application that LogicalTech had built for Bunzl.  Nice and simple and easy to use – it was clearly hitting the spot with the target users and would definitely improve productivity.

There was a bit of a glitch when John switched the PCs back to the main presentation.  When Martin suggested that the 50 or so people all gather around his small screen the crowd roared with laughter.

For the final act Martin took us through typical costing for a solution like the one built for Bunzl.  The most significant part of the event for me was when he demonstrated the incredibly impressive return on investment (ROI) in just under 11 weeks!

To close Martin made us an offer to do business, with a generous $10,000 worth of consulting time towards a mobility solution, plus up to five options of $2,000 worth of consulting.  Once again he made it fun, Martin had us on our feet, looking under our seats, only to be told “there’s nothing there!” which got a pretty big laugh!  We were all invited to have a beer and pizza and the vast majority stayed and networked for an hour, which was an added bonus for the afternoon.

Well done LogicalTech for putting on an informative and entertaining event, that actually added value.  If you do one again I’ll certainly be attending.

A whitepaper with information covering the material presented is available at www.beyondemail.com.au/whitepaper.aspx