Telling a Mobile Story

You may have seen my review of "The Back of the Napkin". The book is all about using pictures and visual thinking to solve problems and sell ideas. I enjoyed the book so I thought I would try to incorporate some drawing into some of my presentations. I drew a picture as I was describing why mobility is important in today’s business world. The final drawing is shown below.

Although every picture tells a story sometimes a few words help. In this case we start on the right with the extremely large computer, I believe I drew a TRS80 here, connected to a database in a client/server model. The person on the far left is a physician who is working with a patient and documenting what is being done.

The middle of the diagram shows the various ways the doctor’s work can be recorded. The orange path shows the traditional paper route the doctor writes down the diagnosis and treatment then gives the paper to the billing person for entry into the system. The yellow path represents the doctor recording the information electronically but having to print the result out to once again give to the billing person. Finally the blue path shows the data going directly to the database allowing for more accuracy and allowing the billing person to interact with patients instead of just doing data entry.

I used this story to introduce the need for mobility solutions for common applications. With the Advantage Web Platform data can now be sent and received from virtually any mobile device. Now the physician can enter information about a patient while visiting them at the hospital and the relevant information can be sent directly to the billing system at the office.

This scenario can be used in all types of industries. Perhaps you manage documents and need to allow access on a tablet. Maybe you support an industry like construction or landscaping where providing an on-site quote can win you the business. The possibilities are endless.

Even with my meager drawing skills the picture seemed to resonate with the group. I think it was relatively effective in conveying my point. If you attend any of my upcoming presentations you may just see some drawing to go along with the slides.

The Advantage Web Platform is available as part of the Advantage 11 Beta which you can download now.