CyberSoft has extensive experience with enterprise and industry specific mobility solutions. We are currently involved with clients in a broad range of projects from mobile workforce management through to specialised remote telemetry.

With our deep understanding of the business, security and technical challenges presented by “occasionally connected” mobile-to-enterprise systems we can provide you with the specialised skills and industry domain knowledge needed to successfully deliver and manage.

The drive to empower staff and contractors to do the work they need to do anywhere, at anytime can place stress on your existing IT infrastructure and business processes.

Extending back-office applications to the field makes mobile device management and enterprise-to-edge security critical to success. Integration with legacy systems such as asset management, GIS, document repositories, accounting and call centres presents challenges.

• A portfolio of over 30 successful end-to-end mobility engagements covering the full breadth of wireless and mobile technologies.
• Experienced consultants serving clients in key industries and markets. Water. Electricity. Transport. B2C.

In addition to a technology and solution focus on wireless connectivity, mobile systems, platforms security, we offer vendor independent advice on enterprise mobility strategies, procurement, managed services and mobile operations.

Recent projects:

Click here to find out more about our mobility projects and case studies…

Our Clients have vision and we’re at the forefront of turning that vision into creative business IT solutions.

As experienced Solution Architects we are closely involved with the design of many of our Client’s IT solutions.

With an approach based on “Solution Architecture starts with an understanding of the problem” we are the vital link between the business and the technology/vendor, acting as a custodian of the functional requirements while converting them into an architecture and design that becomes the “blueprint”.

• A clear focus on getting the requirements right – understanding the problem
• Oversight of future state designs including technology, solution, information and business architecture
• Co-ordinating, reviewing and integrating the deliverables of information and technology architects into cohesive solutions architectures
• Acting as a Design Authority
• Independent subject matter expert reviews of Vendor and SI deliverables during all project phases
• Creation of the technical sections of RFP’s

Recent Projects:

Click here for informative case studies…

The Managing Director of Sydney Water Corporation has announced the successful development and deployment of their $20M mobile field workforce system:

Technology upgrade to improve response times

Sydney Water will improve its maintenance by using a new computer-based scheduling system that allows its civil, mechanical and electrical maintenance crews to receive job requests via portable computers while they are working in the field.

Managing Director Kerry Schott said Sydney Water had spent nearly $20 million installing a new scheduling system and allocating laptop computers designed for outdoor use to over 400 field crews, scheduling and management staff.

“This is one of the biggest technology upgrades Sydney Water has implemented in over five years and we expect it to significantly assist maintenance crews in their response to jobs across the Sydney Water network,” Dr Schott said.

“The new system will save both time and money by getting the right crews to the right jobs at the right time.

Schedulers can identify available crews with the appropriate equipment and expertise to respond to jobs. This means that the need to return to the depot for additional equipment and materials can be reduced.

Schedulers will use the new technology to allocate crews to jobs more efficiently based on their current location, job progress and the location and priority of other jobs.

The new system will also reduce paperwork and improve the accuracy of our databases by allowing staff to update electronic records while they are on site.

The annual cost saving to Sydney Water may be up to several million dollars annually if all goes well, and this productivity improvement is a good step forward for all maintenance crews and schedulers.

The next stage of this technology upgrade will enable staff to access updated safety information, work instructions and network maps from their portable computers.

Sydney Water undertook an extensive staff consultation process before implementing the new system.

Over the past six months we have trained over 500 scheduling and maintenance staff to use the new system, including some who had never used a computer before.”

Read about how we helped Sydney Water design and deliver their Field Work Force System…..

CyberSoft is a technology consultancy located in Sydney, Australia.

As a trusted advisor with strong relationships across an international blue-chip client base, CyberSoft provides strategy & architecture, solution and mobility consulting services to the telecommunications, electricity, water and media sectors.

• Deep industry, technology and SDLC experience
• Experts at “unstructured” problem solving utilising proven methods
• Flexible, repeatable engagement models
• Strong client references

Our Clients have vision and we’re at the forefront of turning that vision into creative business IT solutions.

As experienced Solution Architects we are closely involved with the design of many of our Client’s IT solutions.

With an approach based on “Solution Architecture starts with an understanding of the problem” we are the vital link between the business and the technology/vendor, acting as a custodian of the functional requirements whilst also converting them into an architecture and design that becomes the “blueprint”.

Click here for a comprehensive tour of our successful solution architecture projects as well as informative case studies…

Strategy & Enterprise Architecture:

We deliver to a robust Enterprise and Technical Architectural methodology and framework that ensures IT&T developments are integrated into a unified set of business processes.

Our drive to create practical and useful IT architectures for our clients means our deliverables don’t become “shelf-ware”. Our proven approach delivers clear and measurable benefits sooner rather than later.

Click here to find out more about our Strategy & Architecture client engagements as well as key case studies…

Mobility Consulting:

The drive to empower staff and contractors to do the work they need to do anywhere, at anytime can place stress on your existing IT infrastructure and business processes.

Extending back-office applications to the field makes mobile device management and enterprise-to-edge security critical to success.

• A portfolio of over 30 successful end-to-end mobility engagements covering the full breadth of wireless and mobile technologies.
• Experienced consultants serving clients in key industries and markets. Water. Electricity. Transport. B2C.

Click here to find out more about our mobility projects and case studies…

CyberSoft has a policy of maintaining independence from suppliers. While CyberSoft staff are trained and certified in a variety of vendor products and services, we do not seek to become a business partner.

Our clients consider it important to receive independent advice built around ‘best of breed’ solutions that meet their specific business or technology needs as opposed to solutions driven by business relationships with vendors.

Dependence on technology in the utilities industry is growing more complex - real time, operations, mobility, security (of supply), external market and 3rd party access, business intelligence and CIS.

We deliver to a robust Enterprise and Technical Architectural methodology and framework that ensures IT&T developments are integrated into a unified set of business processes.

Our drive to create practical and useful IT architectures for our clients means that our deliverables don’t become “shelf-ware”. Our proven approach delivers clear and measurable benefits sooner rather than later.

CyberSoft senior staff and principals have extensive consulting backgrounds with major professional services and consulting organizations. They have deep domain knowledge in Infrastructure, Data, Application and Integration coupled with hands-on industry specific experience.

Whether it’s building an EA practice from the ground up or providing specialist architectural skills and knowledge transfer, CyberSoft can provide a valuable cost effective service.

Recent Engagements:

Our client, a major utility had previously deployed a mobile workforce automation solution to over 400 mobile crews. Part of a multi phase mobility system project, work orders are prepared, scheduled and wirelessly dispatched to mobile field workers.

Once fully deployed, the immediate benefits to the client were improved reaction times in responding to faults and outages. This lead to improvements in their regulatory/operating license KPI’s.

The next phase was to extend the solution to provide mobile GIS capability to field crews as part of their workflow.

Cybersoft was engaged to evaluate the client’s mobile GIS business requirements and provide costed solution options.

It’s a Big Small World

The Client was a long-term (and sophisticated) user of the GE Smallworld GIS system. A key challenge we faced was to integrate to a centralized Smallworld system and still allow the mobile users to access GIS data in the field irrespective of whether they were wirelessly connected or not.

Our approach was to:

• Validate the business drivers and existing Client GIS strategies
• Assess the existing enterprise GIS solution and identify gaps and opportunities
• Describe business processes and develop business requirements
• Determine the target solution architecture and define technology principles and standards
• Identify Solution options and map solution options to solution blueprint
• Review the market place for potential solutions
• Determine ‘best fit’ based on agreed criteria

Cybersoft managed the design and prototyping of a solution that elegantly integrated to Smallworld and extracted (via ETL) corporate GIS data in a form suitable for one time deployment to the mobile devices

With a copy of a subset of the corporate Smallworld GIS system now encrypted and stored on each mobile device, the challenge became keeping the local mobile GIS data synchronized with the Smallworld system.

(It is an important architectural principle that the existing enterprise GIS systems be the “source of truth”. Maintaining multiple different corporate GIS systems is extremely expensive and invariable leads to data quality issues.)

With over 60,000 updates to the corporate GIS system occurring each month it was clear that the GIS data stored on the mobile devices would quickly become out of date.

The solution was to automatically:

• Extract a “delta” or “difference” from the corporate GIS system each week (using the Smallworld checkpoint capability),
• Compress the delta data
• Wirelessly transmit this delta to each of the mobile devices.

Integration

The more advanced client requirements necessitated the capturing of information in the field by the mobile users, for example:

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• Identify, select and mark the asset requiring work on a map
• Identify and select other impacted asset/s (e.g. affected assets) on a map
• Display and identify affected properties for financial rebates
• Identify and mark errors on the map

This effectively required the integration of the mobile GIS solution into existing and new business processes and workflows:

• Asset identification was sent to the works management system
• Affected properties were sent to the customer management and financial systems
• “Redlining” of errors on the maps were sent to the Smallworld corporate GIS system

Cybersoft identified and specified the integration points and underlying XML formats for the extraction and integration of this field captured data to the corporate systems.

• Identifying new ideas - principally from a research or new technology base
• Investing in and successfully commercialising these ideas
• Commercialize new technology or business opportunities - specifically those from research, development and emerging market or technology based positions - potentially long-term and non-traditional.
• Manage stakeholders and business partners during the R&D and commercialisation phases
• Manage the entry, progression and exit of initiatives by means of a documented, repeatable and transparent process

Approach

CyberSoft was engaged by the Client to deliver frameworks and processes that would allow for a better understanding of future markets and the innovative technologies that would be needed to supply new products and services to these markets.

• Processes for evaluating and introducing potentially disruptive technologies
• A documented R&D project management framework
• Technological collaboration: identifying key success factors
• Building an entrepreneurial knowledge culture
• Focusing the fuzzy front-end in new product development.

We emphasized the need to communicate to multiple audiences and stakeholders. In particular:

• The stages of conceptual development and the evolution of knowledge as research moves from research to development to a commercial product or service
• The stages of business development and commercialization
• Targets that have been previously agreed and set and their clear subsequent accountabilities

To support the process and frameworks developed as part of our engagement we introduced Enterprise Wiki’s and R&D departmental weblogs as key communication tools. With their “immediacy” and simplicity they provided a sophisticated addition to the Client’s own intranet and CMS.

Outcomes

CyberSoft brought commercial skills, a sound understanding of technology, and broad relationships that allowed the matching of technology-based innovations to newly identified market needs.

Our approach, which targeted communication, process pragmatism and innovation towards future market needs, helped the Client to develop an appreciation of future trends and the technological competencies that were needed to research and develop products and services.

What’s a Cold Chain?

A cold chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain. An unbroken cold chain is an uninterrupted series of storage and distribution activities which maintain a given temperature range.

For example your hamburger patty is made in a food manufacturing plant, stored in cold storage warehouse, eventually loaded onto a refrigerated truck for delivery to the supermarket, stored in cold storage again and finally displayed in the cold meat section.

The chain in this case consists of 5 or 6 separate storage or transport activities, each of which attempts to keep the temperature of the hamburger consistent. (Not taking into account you leaving it on the back seat of the car on the way home!)

Why is the cold chain important?

If food-produce (obviously not just hamburgers) is subjected to temperature “abuse” then the potential for spoilage or food poisoning is greatly increased. This is particularly true in hotter climes. The potential impact is even greater for vaccines…

There is a significant global trend to the use of more perishable, fresh, chilled (and frozen) foods, and temperature sensitive biomedical/pharmaceutical products. At the same time there is an increasing concern by processors, retailers, consumers and governments to assure the safety and quality of these temperature sensitive products, is not jeopardized by hazardous handling prior to consumption.

The value of domestic cold chain products exceeds A$30 billion in Australia alone, and is growing. This is largely refrigerated Road Trailer or Railcar on terrestrial routes. Global Sea/Air perishables refrigerated movements exceed 52 million tonnes per year with growth rates exceeding 5%.

Cold chains can be managed by a quality management system - they can be analyzed, measured, controlled, documented, and validated. However multiple hand offs between each of the distribution points, a variety of different parties involved and a lack of understanding as to what’s happening to the goods at any particular time, means that you’re never entirely sure if the cold chain was maintained.

Apart from the refrigerated storage and transport, it is quite common to use “data loggers” to electronically capture and store the temperature. Data loggers come in various forms – for example refrigerated trucks have one permanently attached that draws a date/time-stamped temperature trace on a piece of paper. Others are entirely electronic and are designed to be portable.

Client Objective

The Client’s objective is a business-to-business freight management solution that would automatically trace, and monitor the distribution of temperature sensitive products to help maintain brand quality, manage food safety and security risks, and enhance supply chain efficiency and customer relationships.

Technology

Our Client, a joint venture between a government department and industry investors, was developing a disposable data logger that could be attached to an individual pallet of chilled or frozen goods and travel with it for the life of journey. The key difference between this logger and existing ones was that it wirelessly transmitted its current temperature reading to a nearby base station that then forwarded it on via the public mobile network.

In conjunction with application servers analyzing the data in near real time and forwarding alerts to interested parties, it provides consignors of perishable cargo with reliable and actionable traceability of their consignments and allows them to react more responsively to any abuse of the consignments.

CyberSoft was involved in the design of all areas of the end-to-end solution including:

• Embedded device design
• Wireless network sensors
• Device Power management research
• UCC/EAN128 data capture
• Device tracking and monitoring algorithms
• Application server design
• Quality Management
• System and device field trials

For many years CyberSoft has been involved in the research and development of communications technology (software and hardware) for a broad range of Clients in a variety of industries.

One of the most technically challenging was the commission Cybersoft received to research and develop key components of a consumer medical telemetry system.’

The Client, a major Japanese conglomerate, operated a “wellness” division that funded a portfolio of health-based initiatives both for it’s 250,000 staff as well as the broader Japanese community.

The Client, in partnership with the Tokyo Hospital Chief Pediatrician, identified an opportunity to provide a higher level of health care to pregnant women in remote areas of Japan. For some of the women a trip to the obstetrician could involve a trip of some hours.

The Objective

The objective was to develop a wireless (2G) medical telemetry device that could be operated from home without a high level of training. The data collected from the device would be used by doctors to determine patient (and baby) health, particularly with high-risk pregnancies.

The system wasn’t intended to replace all contact but to increase overall patient/doctor contact during pregnancy. The inclusion of video and voice would allow the Doctor to interact with the patient. In addition to the videoconferencing aspect a high quality image view was also required,The Client placed a high level of importance on the Doctor being able to perform a “Complexion Check” (trans.)

The Challenge

The technical challenge was to provide high quality two way video and voice in addition to patient telemetry data over a low bandwidth wireless network. A key constraint was that the system had to operate reliably at speeds of less than 64 kbs. This is equivalent to GPRS and is almost an order of magnitude slower that used by existing video-conferencing/tele-medical systems.

Over an R&D period of 2 years CyberSoft’s Australian based engineers and researchers developed a set of technologies that were integrated into a product by the Client in Japan.

These included:

• Wireless low bit-rate multi channel data prioritization protocols

• Software Video Compression (CODEC) H.263

• Software Audio Compression (CODEC) Various ITU standards

• SIP. H.323 -Image Compression

The Client ran a proof-of-concept (POC) with Tokyo Hospital followed by a regional pilot. The research produced several innovative and novel discoveries which the Client subsequently used in a range of products.

While the core technology has now been superseded, several derivative products are becoming available elsewhere with the most “futuristic” perhaps being the Mitsubishi Wellness Navigator.

CyberSoft provides consulting services to Clients that have internal technology Research & Development (R&D) operations. One common area for improvement is around end-to-end technology R&D management.

Invariably the R&D function is as an adjunct to an existing group that isn’t strong in formal technology R&D project management – for example: IT operations, asset management, finance etc.

The Objective

Firstly to work with the Client to educate key stakeholders that R&D Project Management should be considered a core competence – demonstrating that it can deliver a significant competitive edge when deployed successfully.

Secondly to develop, document and socialize appropriate R&D project management frameworks.

The Approach

R&D is composed of a complex array of capabilities and underpinning technical and relational skills. This requires a climate of empowered teams supported by strong management and leadership.

R&D management needs to be seen by stakeholders, staff and investors as simple (possibly light weight) and not overly bureaucratic. In its early phases it must be seen to be facilitating rather than reducing creativity.

Many people, particularly those involved in R&D, are apprehensive about being subjected to formal project management. They:

• Can feel ‘uncomfortable’ with too much structure - ‘it restricts my creativity’
• May not want to be held to detailed plans that seem inappropriate for R&D projects.
• ‘If I knew how to do it then it wouldn’t be research!’.
• Struggle with being asked to “schedule an invention” or be creative to someone else’s timeline.
• May not see the value of using project management techniques when there are so many uncertainties in their projects. After all how do you plan the unknown?

The fear of too much structure is mostly a cultural issue. The use of project management techniques is often associated with large engineering or IT projects, where detailed plans are normal (and essential), milestones and deadlines have very specific dates and there is a high degree of control and oversight.

In contrast the R&D culture can be characterised by a desire for little structure, a need to experiment without a lot of oversight, and an interest in exploring interesting and perhaps valuable sidetracks.

Our approach is to emphase that project management is really about working with people, including R&D people, business owners, investors, stakeholders etc to accomplish the important objectives. Namely the need “to commercialise new technology or business opportunities that deliver superior returns to the Client”

It is the people - not the procedures and techniques - that are critical to accomplishing this objective. Procedures and techniques are merely tools to help people do their jobs. There needs to be flexibility in any tool – they should be used to help the project participants - not to micro-manage and critique them.

Snakes on a Plan

R&D planning is often either inadequate or almost avoided altogether because of the large amount of perceived uncertainty in R&D.

In R&D the plan itself is not nearly as important as the process of planning, by which we carefully consider all of the various aspects and challenges of the project and how to meet them.

We encourage and guide better definition of project objectives at all levels and stages, even if the objective is to be modified later. Better planning and re-planning is actively encouraged, with the understanding that things will more likely than not need to change, but that planning will still help everyone to work more effectively and efficiently.

It is part of a cycle in which business strategy creates the basis for technology R&D strategy, which in turn leads to a portfolio of R&D projects to deliver the technology strategy.

Our approach of not presenting a ‘conveyer belt’ process where ideas fall in one end and a commercial product automatically falls out the other resonated with key creative and technical staff. If it were that straight forward then the success rate for commercialised R&D would be 100% as opposed to the 10-30% actually obtained (actual milage varies between industries and technologies).

Success comes from the iterative nature of each phase in conjunction with the continual feedback and exploitation of knowledge gained.

Client Outcome

By better setting of R&D objectives and better planning of R&D projects, even in spite of all the uncertainty, the effectiveness and the efficiency of R&D resources are improved. Better R&D management helped the Client to:

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• See the big picture -Better understand the difficult tasks ahead and when they will happen - put things first by prioritizing important tasks above less-important tasks
• Minimize efforts on unfruitful sidetracks
• Stay focused on the objectives
• Make better estimates of time and resource needs
• Improve communication among key personnel
• See the need to look at alternative approaches or technologies
• Make better decisions when dealing with tradeoffs between time, performance and resource constraints