"You also make an investment in these technologies knowing full well that in a couple years time the telco will move to a whole new platform for how they do it. Today it might be CDMA/EVDO, tomorrow it's GSM-based G3 or whatever. You've got to do all this with your eyes open, so you know what you're paying for, what you're getting and what your return will be in a specific time frame, before you move to the next technology."

Orica: Selling on the road

For Doug Bell, manager of sales force development at Orica Consumer Products, managing a large, mobile sales force is all about making the most of the information generated through the company's sales force automation system.

Bell's role is to develop electronic sales systems for Orica's sales team that will present them with opportunities to find growth and build a more successful business. Although Orica is best known as a large mining and explosives company, its subsidiary Orica Consumer Products (OCP) consists of well-known Australian consumer brands like Dulux paints, Selley's handyman products and Yates garden products. OCP has a sales force of about 300 mobile sales representatives who service large corporate clients, like Bunnings and Mitre10.

OCP rolled out its fleet of Acer TravelMate tablets in December 2004. It was the company's second rollout of mobile hardware and it was determined to improve upon its previous experience. Three years earlier, OCP had implemented a fleet of Fujitsu tablets, which Bell describes as a "true slate", with no keyboard attached.