Overview

The world of manufacturing is changing. Customers and suppliers are more demanding. Pressure from competitors is more intense. And manufacturers are expected to do things better and faster—with fewer resources. The added pressure of entering new markets, reducing costs and growing revenue means manufacturers have to embark on joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and outsourcing to expand their global footprint. How do you stay ahead of the game when things are moving so quickly?

If you want to stay competitive you have to find innovative ways to improve manufacturing capabilities and business processes. That means making sure everyone in your company—from the top floor to the shop floor—has access to the information, communications and applications they need to work collaboratively, both internally and across your supply chain.

BlackBerry® Business Solutions offer so much more than just wireless email. They can extend your existing investments in enterprise applications and put ERP, MRP, SCM, SFA and CRM applications in the hands of your mobile employees so they can record at the point of performance—giving them instant access to the information they need to improve productivity, streamline operations, increase revenue and decrease production costs. And ideally, improve relationships with customers, dealers and wholesalers, whether they’re in the building or out and about.

Production/shop floor supervisors

Use your BlackBerry® smartphone to access job, inventory and scheduling information from your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, while receiving predefined alerts for quality and delivery issues. You can easily identify if a required part is in stock, expedite an order to meet a promised delivery date and collaborate with others in your organisation on the resolution of issues—all with your BlackBerry smartphone.

Sales professionals

While visiting customers, you can instantly pull up information about outstanding jobs, delivery status, order history, sales programs and more to provide answers to your customers quickly. As well, you can update account information, view your sales pipeline and place an order on the road—without powering up your laptop. With the pressure for sales reps to spend more time on the road rather than in the office, the benefits of BlackBerry smartphones are endless.

Manufacturing executives

Your executive dashboard can be pushed out to your BlackBerry smartphone, allowing you to access business intelligence, from anywhere—the airport, hotel or on the way to an appointment. Whether you need to stay informed about customer service issues, stock price information or competitive intelligence, you can stay on top of your business wherever you happen to be. With BlackBerry smartphones, you can increase your efficiency throughout the day by being able to perform tasks such as providing approvals, accessing customer data and viewing order and financial metrics. Increasing your flexibility could mean spending more time in front of customers, on the shop floor or with your family—wherever you would like to be.

Fleet managers

Manufacturing facilities with a private fleet recognise the difficulties associated with managing a completely mobile workforce. Equipped with individual BlackBerry smartphones, drivers, dispatchers and managers can communicate more effectively. When integrated with the latest GPS technology, BlackBerry smartphones easily become invaluable tools appreciated by both dispatchers and drivers. Dispatchers can easily track driver location, making logical assignments and real-time changes to delivery schedules, while drivers always know the best way to get to their destination.

BlackBerry smartphones can also be used to accept, update and send completed jobs to the dispatcher and capture additional job information from the field, such as number of pieces, weight and proof of delivery. This information feeds back into enterprise systems for tracking and measurement purposes.

Field service employees

Manufacturers with a field service team find the BlackBerry smartphone an invaluable customer support and productivity tool that keeps their reps connected to customers, coworkers and applications. As a field service rep, you can access details on support cases, escalations and customer activities while on the road. While at the customer site, you can quickly check for parts availability and place a parts order. You can even update your service ticket, trigger the billing process and set up another call—all before you leave the customer’s facility.

Learn how organisations such as yours have benefited from BlackBerry Business Solutions

Products & Services

BlackBerry® Business Solutions are made up of customisable software and services because the best solution for your business should be one based on your business.

BlackBerry Smartphones

BlackBerry Business Solutions provide a choice of powerful smartphones and BlackBerry® enabled devices to best suit your needs.

BlackBerry Software

Blackberry software manages the link between the BlackBerry smartphone and your business.

Research In Motion (RIM) Professional Services

The RIM® Professional Services group can be engaged to provide guidance on the initial design and architecture of mobile solutions, assist with upgrade management or manage new infrastructure or application development projects. Learn more about RIM Professional Services

BlackBerry Partner Solutions

Connect to your existing Field Service or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software with the help of a trusted third party who specialises in this application area. Take a look at the partner solutions available

Partner Solutions

• Field Service
• Sales Force Automation

Mobilise your business with the help of over 300 BlackBerry® Alliance Members that build out-of-the-box and custom enterprise applications*. Here is a list of some of the members serving the Manufacturing industry.

Third Party Solutions for Field Service

Antenna Software Inc.

Antenna Software offers an integrated suite of vertically focused mobile enterprise applications for field service management that maximise operational efficiency and profitability, increase customer satisfaction and improve competitive advantage. Antenna's A³ for Field Service enables field service technicians to access and interact with essential information from enterprise systems using BlackBerry® smartphones.

• Antenna A3 for Field Service Intelligence

Dexterra

Dexterra's Concert Mobility Platform provides the means to easily connect to your existing business systems from just about anywhere. Dexterra includes all the functionality and tools necessary to integrate and manage the flow of information to and from the office without the need for buying and integrating additional components. Dexterra's integration, development and administration tools are easy to learn and even easier to use.

• Concert Mobility Platform

Mirifex Systems

Mirifex Mobile Business Access (MBA) is a quick deployment mobile application framework that provides enterprises with a template-based method to mobile-enable critical applications on BlackBerry smartphones. MBA works in both push and pull mode to allow full interactive access to corporate applications, databases and other stored information.

• Mobile Business Access (MBA)

Vettro Corporation

Vettro's FieldMaster application enables field service organisations to reduce technician interaction with the call center, ensure Service Level Agreements are met, improve customer service and increase the number of trouble tickets a technician can close per day.

• Vettro FieldMaster

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Third Party Solutions for Sales Force Automation

iEnterprises, Inc.

CRM on the Go™ is the ultimate wireless Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application that helps you and your mobile workforce easily manage sales leads, clients, opportunities and more so you can improve sales, productivity and customer care virtually whenever and wherever you need to most. CRM on the Go is designed for BlackBerry smartphones so it is available virtually anytime and anyplace—even when you are out of cellular network coverage. CRM on the Go works with any CRM application, including iExtensions CRM, Salesforce.com, Siebel and more, so you can make your existing CRM investment easier to use.

• CRM on the Go

Saratoga Wireless

Saratoga Wireless™ for BlackBerry smartphones from Saratoga Systems provides secure connectivity to enterprise data from back-end systems. This powerful wireless data access platform extends access to existing enterprise data, applications and business processes to groups of mobile workers, virtually anytime, anywhere. It enables users to increase their productivity, make more informed decisions and improve customer relations through faster customer responsiveness.

• Saratoga Wireless for BlackBerry Smartphones (PDF)

TenDigits Software

TenDigits MobileAccess for Microsoft CRM is a leading packaged software application that enables rapid deployment of Microsoft CRM to mobile employees with a fully integrated, out-of-the-box solution on BlackBerry smartphones—even in customized implementations. MobileAccess provides reliable, secure access to business data regardless of network connectivity through an intuitive user experience.

• Mobile Access for Microsoft CRM

Vettro Corporation

Vettro RainMaker, a comprehensive mobile application for Salesforce.com users, provides online and offline access to critical sales and customer data. The application is optimised for BlackBerry smartphones and can be installed, updated and even deleted wirelessly, eliminating the need to recall devices from the field. Vettro RainMaker provides sales organisations with access to the information they need to more effectively manage their pipeline, respond to leads and customer requests faster and increase selling time in the field.

• Vettro RainMaker

Vaultus Mobile Technologies

The Executive Dashboard enables district managers to have wireless access to sales data on the BlackBerry smartphone. Managers can drill down from division, to region, to store, to department. They can view sales by day, week, month, quarter and year and compare performance versus “the plan”. And data gets refreshed automatically.

• Vaultus Performance Management Dashboard

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*Your use of third party software, hardware, products, and/or services (collectively, the "Third-party Information") shall be governed by and subject to your agreement with the third party, including without limitation, your agreement to the terms of separate Third-party Information licenses, if any. Any Third-party Information that is provided with or without Research In Motion (RIM) products and/or services is provided "as is". RIM makes no representation, warranty or guarantee whatsoever in relation to the Third-party Information and RIM assumes no liability whatsoever in relation to the Third-party Information even if RIM has been advised of the possibility of such damages or can anticipate such damages. The inclusion of Third-party Information herein does not imply endorsement by RIM of the Third-party Information or the third party in any way. RIM does not control and is not responsible for any Third-party Information, including without limitation, the content, accuracy, intellectual property issues, compatibility, performance, trustworthiness, legality, decency, links, or any other aspect of the Third-party Information.

Customer Success

Learn about the organisations around the world that have been successful implementing BlackBerry® Business Solutions.

• Böwe Bell + Howell
  Partnerships and in-house know-how helped this manufacturer build a custom application for their field technicians and increase their productivity.

• Lafarge North America (PDF)
  Find out how the largest supplier of construction materials uses BlackBerry® smartphones and custom application offers to gain a competitive edge.

Resource Library

Brochures

• BlackBerry® Business Solutions for Manufacturing (PDF)

Tools

• ROI Calculator for BlackBerry® Beyond Email

White Papers

• Solving The Wireless Puzzle (IDC)
• BlackBerry ROI Study and Calculator
• BlackBerry Security

News and Events

Stay up-to-date with the latest information on press releases, articles and events we will be attending in the coming months.

Check back soon for updates.

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