- Coordinating a Busy Family
- Supporting Roving Nightingales
- The Reach of SyncML Applications
The Reach of SyncML Applications
SyncML is aimed to enable truly interoperable data synchronization. In a world where applications can synchronize and exchange data with each other in an interoperable fashion, a floodgate of applications is suddenly opened. The rows of Table 3-1 list various vertical industries. The columns list various cross-industry functions. SyncML potentially enables applications in every individual cell of this table. This chapter has already offered examples above for Internet services, and health care services and operations. We list a few more examples below and check off the corresponding cells.
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An auto insurance adjuster moves around town inspecting several vehicles for collision damages and writing adjustment reports in his laptop. Later in the day, the reports are synchronized with the Server datastore. The adjuster report is later correlated with filed claims to determine the amount of reimbursement (Insurance/Operations).
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A sales representative for a pharmaceutical company goes around to various drugstores in a city. He secures orders for drugs and other pharmaceutical supplies over the course of a day and records them in his handheld PDA. At the end of the day, he synchronizes his PDA with the Enterprise Server and the processing of the orders begins (Health Care/Sales & Distribution).
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An employee in a local department store inspects the aisles and makes entries in his handheld PDA for store items that need replenishment. He then goes in the back office, and synchronizes his PDA with the store server (a PC). The store server places restocking orders for the appropriate items (Retail/ Procurement).
As an exercise, the reader is invited to reflect and imagine a few more applications and populate a few more cells of the table. The reader will likely succeed in populating the table substantially in a relatively short time. The applications in the table are in fact applications of data synchronization and not strictly applications of SyncML. The key point to note is that by enabling interoperable data synchronization, SyncML enables a wide variety of business applications.
Table 3-1. The rows identify various vertical industries. The columns identify cross-industry functions. The checkmarks indicate applications above.
Sales & Distribution |
Marketing |
Supply Chain |
Manufacturing |
Customer Relations Management |
Procurement |
Services |
Operations |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Health Care |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
|||||
Online Services |
✓ |
|||||||
Automotive |
||||||||
Electronics |
||||||||
Energy |
||||||||
Chemical |
||||||||
Banking |
||||||||
Insurance |
✓ |
|||||||
Retail |
✓ |
|||||||
Travel |