Why MCL-Link. Visualize business data integrity. Realize MCL-Link. Visualize Mobilize Realize MCL-Collection

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1 Visualize Mobilize Realize MCL-Collection Why MCL-Link Visualize business data integrity Realize MCL-Link

2 Why MCL-Link Mobile Worker Deployment Route accounting, direct store delivery, physical inventory, retail returns, competitive price surveys, electronic ordering, dashboard sales product lookup, and field service are all typical applications using batch data collection terminals. The applications that run on these devices involve local or remote, occasionally connected, point-to-point data communications with: Daily downloads, such as: Mobile worker task lists. Lookup tables. Price lists. Images. Label formats. Periodic downloads, such as: Application updates. New applications. Daily uploads of mobile worker collected data, such as: Data files and data records. o Physical inventory. o Sales orders. o Purchase orders. o Proofs of delivery. The integrity of your batch uploads and downloads, and consequently the integrity of your business data is dependent upon successful data delivery. How is this data integrity achieved? The answer is MCL-Link. MCL-Link MCL-Link is MCL-Collection s communications server for direct connect serial or modem dial-up, batch data communications. MCL-Link manages your deployment of mobile terminals running MCL applications in batch, non-concurrent user environments. It: Ensures data delivery. Automates uploads and downloads of applications and application data. Handles data exchanges between the mobile terminal and your host systems. Manages your batch terminal applications. One of MCL-Link s greatest benefits comes from its ability to intelligently handle record level data exchanges. Consider a physical inventory application. You have a team of inventory mobile workers at different locations counting like items. At the

3 end of the shift, you want all the collected data immediately posted to your Oracle database. With MCL-Link s ability to exchange record level information, each mobile worker s inventory is intelligently uploaded item by item. Each record may be posted to a couple of database tables simultaneously: one table to associate the inventory taken by each mobile worker with the given inventory location and the mobile worker s ID; and a second table to reflect a running tally of all inventories from all mobile workers from all locations. MCL-Collection s architecture is a layered approach enabling MCL-Link to use multiple MCL-Bridges concurrently and thereby allowing a mobile worker application to update, for example, SAP, Oracle, and an Excel spreadsheet database all at the same time, via MCL-Link. The result is that in an MCL-Link point-to-point communications environment, your mobile worker applications have all the same host access as your networked mobile terminals. Minimizing Total Cost of Ownership In addition to MCL-Link s unsurpassed communications flexibility which allows you to tailor your communications sessions to suit your operations, MCL-Link has several features that minimize the cost of ownership of your batch application deployment. Guaranteed data delivery. Minimized data communications traffic. Remote project update. Guaranteed Data Delivery MCL-Link has an ACK/NAK communications protocol with packet level retries and checksums. Thanks to this robust protocol, MCL guarantees data delivery between MCL mobile worker applications and your host systems when you use MCL-Link. Consider the cost to your business if you cannot guarantee your batch data delivery: Lost sales orders resulting in: Lost revenues. Unhappy customers. Loss of future potential revenues as unhappy customers take their business elsewhere. Lost inventory reports causing: A loss of visibility of shortages. An inability to fill sales orders. Lost revenues. Unhappy customers. Loss of future potential revenues as unhappy customers take their business elsewhere. Lost inventory reports: Creating doubt about stock levels. Necessitating bigger safety margins. Requiring more warehouse storage capacity/costs. Causing longer inventory turns.

4 Lost proofs of delivery resulting in: Lost revenues. Increased collection periods. Write-offs. Re-deliveries. Shrinkages. MCL-Link ensures data delivery. Therefore, none of these conditions can occur without your knowledge. Data Communications Traffic By exchanging only data and applications, MCL-Link minimizes traffic, bandwidth usage, and the connection time between the mobile terminal and MCL-Link. This approach gives the best possible device response times to minimize bandwidth usage, and thereby minimize operating costs relating to telephone charges for remote workers using dial-up modem data communications. Remote Project Update In addition to the normal exchange of operational data, you also need to manage the application running on your mobile terminals. MCL-Link offers local and remote automatic application updating for mobile terminals. Individual mobile terminals, groups of mobile terminals, or all known mobile terminals may be targeted to receive a new version of an MCL application. This allows you to maintain accurate application version control across your mobile terminal population. Think about the cost of ownership to keep a mobile terminal application deployment current. The normal depreciation of a terminal is 5 years. A reasonable expectation is that you will upgrade the mobile worker s application at least three times over those 5 years. Without the benefit of MCL-Link, every terminal must be physically sent to a central maintenance location for application upgrade. Several costs are incurred per terminal throughout this process. Handling cost incurred by the person at the remote site: Prepare terminal for shipment. Transportation cost from the remote site to the central maintenance location. Handling cost incurred by person performing the application maintenance upgrade: Unpack terminal. Dock terminal. Upload new software. Test terminal. Prepare terminal for return shipment. Transportation cost from central maintenance location back to the remote site.

5 Case Example 1 - Cost to Upgrade 50 Terminals Thrice in 5 Years without MCL-Link Assume 100 to cover the costs to centrally upgrade a terminal based upon the costs incurred in the process described above. Cost to upgrade terminals: = (Cost per terminal) x (Number of terminals) x (Number of upgrades) = 100 x 50 x 3 = 15,000 Now, add to this, 3 days loss of worker productivity relating to the fact that the mobile terminal is out of service during the upgrade one day in initial shipment, one day in upgrade, one day in return shipment: Cost of lost labour: = (Cost per day per worker) x (Number of days of lost productivity) x (Number of workers) = Cost per day per worker x 3 x 50 = Salary of approximately one-half man-year. Total cost to upgrade 50 terminals without MCL-Link: = Cost to upgrade terminals + Cost of lost labour = 15,000 + salary of one-half man-year Case Example 2 - Cost to Upgrade 50 Terminals Thrice in 5 Years Using Centralized MCL-Link Assumptions: One central maintenance location servicing 50 terminals remotely via MCL-Link. Upgrades are performed using MCL-Link s remote project update feature. 35 labour cost for central administrator to schedule MCL-Link to update 50 terminals. 100 each cost for dial-up modems. Each terminal requires its own dial-up modem to communicate with central location. Central maintenance person schedules MCL-Link to deliver the updated application to 50 terminals. Cost of MCL-Link: = 240 Cost of labour to upgrade 50 terminals three times: = (Labour cost to update 50 terminals) x (Number of upgrades) = 35 x 3 = 105 Cost of dial-up communications: = (Cost of external modem) x (Number of modems) + (Operational telephone charges) = 100 x 50 + variable telephone costs = 5,000 + variable telephone costs Total cost to upgrade 50 terminals with MCL-Link: = (Cost of MCL-Link) + (Cost of labour) + (Cost of dial-up communications) = ,000 + variable telephone costs = 5,345 + variable telephone costs

6 Assumptions: Case Example 3 - Cost to Upgrade 50 Terminals Thrice in 5 Years Using Distributed MCL-Link 50 local sites each running a copy of MCL-Link with direct connect to one terminal each. Upgrades are performed using MCL-Link s remote project update feature. 35 labour cost for central administrator to schedule the MCL-Links for terminal update. Local sites communicate with central maintenance location via in-store register to leverage existing corporate network infrastructure. Central maintenance person schedules each of the 50 MCL-Links to deliver the updated application to its local terminal. Cost of MCL-Link: = (Cost MCL-Link) x (Copies MCL-Link) = 240 x 50 = 12,000 Cost of labour to upgrade 50 terminals three times: = 35 x 3 = 105 Total cost to upgrade 50 terminals with MCL-Link: = (Cost of MCL-Link) + (Cost of labour) = 12, = 12,105 As you analyze these cases, keep in mind that Case Example 1 involves a configuration with variable associated costs. If, for example, 4 terminal updates were required instead of the assumed 3 updates, total associated costs would increase to approximately 20,000. These costs would escalate if other unforeseen updates became necessary. This example also makes assumptions regarding unknown shipping costs. Your average shipping costs may well be higher than the costs assumed here. Overnight shipping costs of 50 are not unheard of. Also, do not overlook the cost of lost productivity while the terminals are out of service for upgrade. By contrast, in Case Example 3, total costs are essentially fixed. Incremental terminal updates have negligible costs associated with them. In fact, you can update your terminals daily, weekly, monthly, or annually, without any significant cost impact. Why MCL-Link? MCL-Link not only minimizes the total cost of ownership of your batch application deployment, it also simplifies the management of your mobile workforce deployment while ensuring your data integrity so you can make sound business decisions.

7 Top Reasons to Use MCL-Collection Core competency in development tools for data capture, mobile workforce applications development, deployment, and management. High productivity development environment to create applications that integrate data capture technologies, wireless communications, and mobile computing. Development environment to create multimodal applications combining technologies such as barcode scanners, touch screens, keyboards, signature capture, imagers, radio frequency identification, displays, printers, and voice recognition. Flexible, modular deployment architecture: Building blocks to customize host access, network size, and communications modes. Easy concurrent access to host applications, ODBC compliant databases, warehouse management systems (WMS), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Scalable deployments from 1 to 62,500 concurrent mobile terminals per server. Efficient for small system deployments. Powerful and optimized for large distributed system deployments. Real-time, on-demand, or batch data communications. o Seamless, transparent transitions back and forth between these modes of communication. Continuously, casually, or occasionally connected users. o Seamless, transparent transitions back and forth between states of connection. Framework so you can focus on functional business issues, and not on implementation issues and constantly changing low-level technologies such as operating systems, wireless infrastructures, and data capture methods. A focus on minimizing your total cost of application ownership: High-productivity development environment. Multimodal approach. Low on-going maintenance effort. Modular, flexible architecture. Easy application deployment and management. Cross-platform compatibilities. Forward migration paths. Future-proofed applications. Investment preservation. Benefits to your organization from data capture, mobile worker applications created using MCL-Collection: A mobilized workforce. Workforce productivity improvements. Cost reductions. Competitive advantages

8 Visualize Mobilize Realize MCL-Collection MCL-Designer High-productivity, horizontal development environment to create enterprise-ready, multimodal, data capture applications. MCL-Link Batch/ Point-to-Point, Serial: Direct Connect RS-232 Modem USB MCL Technologies Headquarters Chaussée de Bruxelles, Waterloo Belgium Tel Fax MCL-Net Real-Time/ Concurrent Users: Wireless WLAN: WiFi, WWAN: GSM, GPRS, Wired Ethernet MCL-Bridges Host Applications Back Office Applications ERP: SAP Warehouse Management (WMS) ODBC: Oracle, Access, FoxPro, DB2, Excel, Sybase, SQL MCL Technologies US Competence Centre MCL Technologies UK Competence Centre MCL Technologies Ireland Competence Centre MCL Technologies NL Competence Centre MCL-Voice Voice Recognition, Voice Synthesis About MCL Technologies MCL Technologies is a recognized leader in delivering high-productivity software development tools for mobile workforce application development, deployment, and management. Its enterprise-ready, standards-based software suite, MCL-Collection, seamlessly integrates the latest technologies with mobile computer, multi-manufacturer, cross-platform compatibility. Through the integration of mobile computing, wireless infrastructures, and data capture technologies like barcode scanners, radio frequency identification, and voice recognition, MCL-Collection helps organizations deploy mission critical and on-demand multimodal applications to improve workforce productivity, reduce costs, and achieve competitive advantage. Since 1992, MCL-Collection has been implemented in thousands of locations around the world by large and small organizations with sectors of activities as varied as retail, banking, healthcare, government, transportation and logistics, warehousing, field service, and manufacturing. More information is available at