Selling pen and paper how hard can it be?

Digital pen and paper technology is gaining rapid popularity with all sorts of organisations employing mobile workforces.

Technology for people on the move is a growing business. Our customers gain big savings in time, cost and energy, as well as better business flow and efficiency, and improved customer service. So our market is growing fast. And that brings good opportunities for the right partners to help us sell into new sectors and applications.

At the heart of our offer is digital pen and paper technology using Anoto Functionality. Its a simple but sophisticated process for filling in digitised forms and then transmitting them electronically via Bluetooth mobile phones. So its all about the efficient collection and management of data from people in the field service engineers, care staff, construction workers and so on. Were now expanding it with new services for tracking and visibility, job push and allocation, resource management and intelligent scheduling. 

Some think that this sounds like a specialist sell. It seems complex. But what could be simpler than offering a full suite of services around a familiar process and a non-invasive technology - pen and paper? The fact is, people like writing with pens. To the user, a digital pen just feels normal. All they have to do is tick a SEND box on the pre-printed digitised form and off it goes. No computers to lug around, no data to key in, no barriers to slow things down, and no expensive-looking devices to worry about. Best of all, theres very little change needed to existing working practices, so little or no training.

Behind the scenes, of course, theres some clever stuff going on. A tiny infra-red camera in the nib of each pen takes a hundred pictures per second of the pen strokes, and converts them into digital data. The Anoto pattern on the form (a series of small dots on an invisible grid) would cover the whole of Europe and Asia if it was printed out. Adaptive handwriting recognition software is used to intuitively learn how individuals write.

But the users in the field dont have to think about any of this. They just get a simple, plug-and-play solution that connects with their phone, lets them attach photos, and links them in with simple communications with the people back at base. 

So where might you come in?

Destiny technology is an attractive proposition for resellers who want to get involved. And were always looking for the right people to join our channel partner community. We get the benefits of an extended, professional sales and service capability. You get the benefits of providing a multi award-winning technology thats proven, popular, profitable, and rapidly growing.

We fully support all our partners, with comprehensive and continuing training on products, service and applications.

There are a number of different roles to suit potential skill sets, including:

• Service provider a traditional partner role with responsibility from sales through to first line support, and ideal for companies with a large B2B customer base and active sales teams
• Revenue share partner for companies with a large potential B2B customer base but not the sales or support resource to be a full service provider. (Youd work closely with our sales team, while the customer relationship would remain with Destiny.)
• Application developer you might also have the skills to design and develop forms and applications for your customers, such as full Anoto SDKs, Vision Objects SDKs, and Destiny on Demand print facility

Extending Destinys offer through a variety of channels is key for growth. More and more, were selling our solutions to companies who want to buy applications and mash them with their existing ones. Take Salesforce.coms AppExchange, for example. Sales people on the move can now capture, review and transmit handwritten customer information, contacts, sales leads, events and tasks straight into their Salesforce account using Destiny digital pens and forms.

Its always good to get involved in delivering business benefits like this that customers really value. Service organisations are crying out for accurate, high quality and real-time information. Content really is king. We help them get the information they need at every point. Their customers get a much improved service. Mobile teams get more job satisfaction. Everyone wins.

All this is easily affordable, too, with capital-free pricing programmes that avoid the barrier that upfront investment often represents. 

Contact Destiny to find out more about the opportunities of becoming a channel partner.