Press Room
Palm Handheld Mobile Computing Solutions Reduce Operational Costs at China Chemical
Pharmaceutical Company Cuts Sales Data-entry Time by up to 50 Percent
6 August, 2002 - Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM) today announced
that China Chemical and Pharmaceutical Co., a leading pharmaceutical
in Taiwan, has reduced operational costs with a Palm™
handheld mobile solution. The innovative "Portable Sales
Assistant" solution, built on the Palm OS® platform,
provides valuable information to China Chemical's salespeople
on-demand and on-the-go. Since the solution's deployment last
year, the company has reported greater efficiency levels from
its sales force and enhanced customer-servicing capabilities.
By linking the company's Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP)
system with its Palm handheld solution, China Chemical's sales
team is able to access information downloaded from the company's
central server to their Palm Vx handhelds. They also can place
customer orders on the handheld, which then are uploaded into
the company's database in the office. With the system, the
time taken to input and process data by its 100 sales professionals
has been reduced significantly, by up to 50 percent.
China Chemical's Portable Sales Assistant solution was developed
by Action International, a mobile solutions provider that
offers enterprises business system integration on mobile devices.
This enterprise solution did away with China Chemical's paper-intensive
business processes. It also allowed the company to store and
access information more easily, accurately and securely.
Mobilising inventory check and order-taking
According to Mr. Han-Shun Lin, manager of the MIS Department
at China Chemical, "Before going into a meeting, our
sales professionals will download information about the customer
and the relevant products from the company's database server
onto their Palm handhelds. Armed with this information, they
can glean over it at business meetings, check inventory levels
and give accurate quotes to the customer on the spot. The
Palm handhelds are slim and light, and are much easier to
carry around than notebook computers. The direct link between
the handhelds and our server also eliminates redundant data
entry, relieving our sales people entirely from the tedious
paperwork."
In other markets outside Asia, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration
(FDA) and its European counterpart, EMEA (The European Agency
for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products) have found that
electronic data capture can improve the quality of data by
several hundred percent compared to paper-based data-collection
methods. Spurring the pharmaceutical industry's introduction
to mobile technology is a 1997 decision by the FDA that provided
clear guidelines on how technology should support clinical
data capture and storage to streamline the clinical trial
process and improve the quality of data collected.
"With Palm's experience in helping pharmaceutical customers
with their deployments of Palm handheld mobile solutions,
we are excited that China Chemical is similarly reaping the
benefits of operational efficiencies with its mobile computing
investments based on the Palm handhelds and Palm OS platform,"
said Sharon Ee, Marketing Director, Palm Asia Pacific.
About Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. is a pioneer in the field of mobile and wireless
Internet solutions and a leading provider of handheld computers,
according to IDC (December 2000). Based on the Palm OS®
platform, Palm's handheld solutions allow people to carry
and access their most critical information with them wherever
they go. Palm(TM) handhelds address the needs of individuals,
enterprises and educational institutions through thousands
of application solutions.
The Palm OS platform is also the foundation for products from Palm's licensees and strategic partners, such as Franklin Covey, HandEra (formerly TRG), Handspring, IBM, Kyocera, Sony, and Symbol Technologies. Platform licensees also include Acer, Garmin, Nokia and Samsung. The Palm Economy is a growing global community of industry-leading licensees, world-class OEM customers, and more than 160,000 innovative developers and solution providers that have registered to develop solutions based on the Palm OS platform. Palm went public on March 2, 2000. Its stock is traded on the Nasdaq national market under the symbol PALM. More information is available at www.palm.com
Palm OS is a registered trademark, and Palm is a trademark of Palm, Inc. or its subsidiaries.
