Mobility Man: Graham O'Keeffe, CEO SkyWire

Just over a decade since the founding of mobility systems integration specialist, SkyWire, CEO Graham O'Keeffe looks back on changes in the mobility market and considers its special affinity with the modern supply chain. Heather Caulfield caught up with Graham in Sydney recently…

It was in South Africa in the mid 1980's that British-born Graham O'Keeffe demonstrated a hand-held data collection terminal to a client for the first time. The potential for the lightweight technology made an instant impression on the young man, so much so that he has based his career on the sector ever since.

“It was the uniqueness that attracted me,” O'Keeffe says. “Mobility was a very specialised market and there were limited systems available but there was a definite need for data collection. People were moving away from the clipboard.”

In 1998, after 24 years of living and working in South Africa, O'Keeffe set his sights on Australia. He spent 12 months researching opportunities and discovered a market that was beginning to move away from direct vendor-toend user sales, yet it had no system integrators able to help customers with mobile data collection and wireless networks for the supply chain.

Within the year O'Keeffe had moved country and the new venture, Skywire, was established with an experienced, senior Sydney based team.

“Of course it's changed since then,” O'Keeffe acknowledges. “The sector is quite busy now with more people incorporating mobile data collection as part of their solutions but at that time, there was no one focused on it.”

The nature of customer deployments has also changed, shifting from predominantly green field sites to a situation where upgrades and technology refinements rule. O'Keeffe explains, “It's unusual to find anyone at the big end of town that hasn't already got systems in place. The new systems that we sell, where people are moving from a clipboard, tend to be smaller companies that have grown to a certain size and they want to improve efficiencies. Or they might be significant new entrants into the Australian market.

Most of the time we're dealing with an educated and sophisticated market.”

Mobilising the Supply Chain
Through countless deployments, O'Keeffe has experienced the special rapport that mobile data capture has with the supply chain. “Each step along the way goods are moved and data needs to be recorded. A single error in that chain can result in serious ramifications further down the track,” he says.

Much of the current activity in the local mobility market is occurring in the production end of the supply chain. There is also a small but growing demand from fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) organisations who want to equip merchandisers with hand held terminals. As with any other mobility sector, the biggest drivers are accuracy and speed.

“It's not as simple as getting an order out the door quicker. It's about how much more can be achieved. If a picker with a clipboard can get 50 orders out of the warehouse each day and the application of technology might raise this to 65 orders, the impact on the business is quite important,” O'Keeffe observes.

A topic that is raising considerable interest among end users is the potential for consumer devices such as BlackBerries or other smart phones and so on to replace professional data capture terminals. Clients are keen to use the equipment they already own, but O'Keeffe says, “It all comes down to whether something is fit for purpose. If you use it in the right environment, great. But don't try putting something like that on the truck or in the warehouse. Consumer electronics aren't cut out for it.”

“Organisations are always looking to lower costs and this is happening. The power of the processors multiply and because of production and volumes, the costs come down. But if anyone needs any justification as to whether this technology delivers a good ROI (return on investment), just look at the third party logistics companies. They receive goods, store them, pick and ship them out. This is what they breathe and sleep, and many of them are onto their third generation of mobility equipment. After four or five years they upgrade for better security or because their equipment is getting tired, but they are continually reinvesting,” O'Keeffe adds.

Ringing in the 3G changes
Since the 1980s a wireless local area network (LAN) has been the mainstay of almost every mobility deployment but O'Keeffe believes that this is under challenge. “There have been interesting moves with telco-provided 3.5G wide area networks (WANs),” he says. “Clients are asking why they should put in a wireless LAN, especially if they are planning to move in three or so years. Why not try to survive if they can obtain good enough coverage in the warehouse and if they can negotiate reasonable carriage costs on the public 3G network?”

O'Keeffe is keenly interested in the potential especially as a number of SkyWire clients in temporary premises have chosen just such an approach. He also remains cautious. “There are issues to consider including coverage, bandwidth and security.” He suggests that in the immediate future the best option might be a merging of the two technologies, whereby trucks connect to a WAN while on the road before automatically synchronising with the more secure LAN on their return to the warehouse.

Asked to consider where mobility trends are heading, O'Keeffe concludes “It's all a matter of the most cost-efficient transfer of data. It might take a few years, but I believe that we will eventually see more community-based or regional- based wireless infrastructures that people subscribe to so that they don't all have to install their own wireless network.”