Roger Fingas
Apple and IBM on Thursday announced 10 new MobileFirst enterprise apps, raising the total to 32, while focusing on several new areas including business travel, shift management, and field operations.
The travel apps include Travel Plan — offering up trip recommendations and itineraries on an iPhone — and Travel Track, which provides information on an iPhone or Apple Watch while a trip is in progress, with a special emphasis on linking up business colleagues. The shift management tools include Shift Sync for the iPhone and Apple Watch, and Shift Track for the iPad. Together the apps let workers submit time-off requests and accept or decline shifts, while managers can authorize and track coverage changes.
The various field work apps include Expert Resolve, Asset Inspect, Field Connect, and Safe Site. Field Connect, which provides job alerts for technicians, is notably available for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Most MobileFirst apps support just one or two Apple devices.
Finally, two apps for mortage loan officers include the iPhone-only Loan Track and the iPad-based Loan Advise. The latter is meant to help officers suggest loans to clients.
Apple and IBM first announced the MobileFirst partnership over a year ago. Since then the companies have grown even closer, with new ventures into education and healthcare, and IBM offering its workers a choice between a Mac or a PC when setting up a new or upgraded workstation.
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
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11 Comments
Great to see these generic apps keep coming! They provide useful function and an entree for enterprise IT to expand/customize to their own needs ... while using Apple devices and IBM services. It is interesting that most (all?) of these offerings have an attendant Apple Watch app. Hmm ... What if your employer provided an Apple Watch and required that you wear it as part of your job ... One final thought on the [I]Travel[/I] app ... When I worked for IBM, 1964-1980, I traveled a lot. It was a real PITA to record/submit/get approval on travel expenses -- and coordinate that with travel advances, accounting and company policy. I don't see travel expense reporting mentioned in the article. IMO, that would be a real plus for the traveler, himself!
It's interesting (and good to see!) how they are splitting related functionality across multiple, smaller, simpler apps rather than trying to cram a whole bunch of functionality into one giant app that would be slower to load and more complicated to use.
One final thought on the Travel app ... When I worked for IBM, 1964-1980, I traveled a lot. It was a real PITA to record/submit/get approval on travel expenses -- and coordinate that with travel advances, accounting and company policy.
I used to work at IBM also - IBM doesn't always use its own tools. At the time I worked there IBM owned ClearCase, but we used some other much worse piece of shit for source code management.
[quote name="e1618978" url="/t/187293/apple-ibm-add-10-more-mobilefirst-enterprise-apps-covering-field-work-shift-tracking-more#post_2750508"][QUOTE name="Dick Applebaum" url="/t/187293/apple-ibm-add-10-more-mobilefirst-enterprise-apps-covering-field-work-shift-tracking-more#post_2750504"] One final thought on the [I]Travel[/I] app ... When I worked for IBM, 1964-1980, I traveled a lot. It was a real PITA to record/submit/get approval on travel expenses -- and coordinate that with travel advances, accounting and company policy.[/QUOTE] I used to work at IBM also - IBM doesn't always use its own tools. At the time I worked there IBM owned ClearCase, but we used some other much worse piece of shit for source code management. [/quote] Yeah, tell me ... IMO, one of the premiere tests of the MobileFirst offerings is if Apple and IBM [B][I] both [/I][/B] dogfood their own solutions ... Eh?
One final thought on the Travel app ... When I worked for IBM, 1964-1980, I traveled a lot. It was a real PITA to record/submit/get approval on travel expenses -- and coordinate that with travel advances, accounting and company policy.
I don't see travel expense reporting mentioned in the article. IMO, that would be a real plus for the traveler, himself!
Most companies already have travel and expense software. These are often tied into the company credit card whereby the expenses are entered manually by the employee or automatically by the credit card company, submitted and approved electronically. Very few paper receipts nowadays. The last two companies I worked for paid the CC bill directly, saving time and energy on my part. I never had to lay out money except for incidentals where you have to pay cash and those were reimbursed on the very next payroll check.