Deadlines mean money, which is why investor-developer Roch Sullivan says he installed the ICONZ Office Online solution on an i-mate Pocket PC.

“All the tradesmen I deal with use the phone and all the suppliers use email. So in the past I had to physically log into my desktop – but not any more,” he says.

Sullivan’s mobile office is made possible through his i-mate Pocket PC, which has mobile phone and camera capabilities, and ICONZ Office Online, which enables business class email and applications. The solution can be used by any ICONZ domain holder, or any other user with their own domain.

Although many mobile phones can receive email today, the ICONZ Office Online package takes things significantly further than that – offering full Outlook-style features like calendaring, shared meeting resources, contact list updates and so on – which Sullivan says has improved his time management no end.

As the property developer is always moving around – from building sites, to motorways, to South Island mountain ranges – he takes his Office Online i-mate with him wherever he goes. The freedom of movement it offers has enabled Sullivan to make some significant changes to his working and personal life.

For example, ICONZ Office Online has been instrumental in permitting him to close his city office and also enabling some of his contractors to work remotely from home. This has meant annual savings in rentals and office paraphernalia in the thousands of dollars. “In the past I found email capable mobile phones too big and too difficult to use,” he says, “but the i-mate is simplicity itself.” It’s also tough – Sullivan says he has even used it while mountain biking.

Data charges stay low
Data charges with Office Online are kept to a minimum. When Sullivan collects his email while on the move, his phone only downloads a small amount of the headers and the body text of each email (the size of this initial download is user configurable). If he then sees a message that he wants to download more of (perhaps a quote in a Word document from a supplier), he can then tag that message to download in full, plus any attachments, if required.

This is done to save time and bandwidth costs – Office Online users can get all their mail, and any attachment, but only if they need it. This means they’re not paying to download a bunch of spam and other non essential communications to their i-mate.

If Sullivan wants to respond while out and about, he has several options. He can choose to configure his phone to:

With Office Online, emails are stored centrally, so it doesn’t matter in what way users connect to their emails, they will always get the same view. This includes status notifications. If a user reads an email on their mobile, for example, the next time they log on to their desktop PC, that email will show up as ‘read’ there as well.

Wherever you roam
Sullivan says the i-mate’s camera has also come in handy with his many projects when getting onsite quotes such as construction work and furniture pricing all on the run – a recent development in Auckland’s Karangahape Road being a case in point.

This particular project involved a total refit and modernisation with two San-Francisco style penthouse apartments, 16 other apartments and a number of roadside retail outlets. Plenty of photos were taken on this job he says. Sullivan’s business considerations can take him as far a field as Naseby in the South Island, where he is restoring a 1850s hotel with more than 35 rooms.

This project will include a mountain bike park which will mean a lot of work in the field. Once again, ICONZ Office Online is providing Sullivan the capacity to manage his important business communications, even though he’s miles from an office building, city center or desktop PC.

For more information about this case study contact
sales@iconz.net
www.iconz.co.nz

January 2005