Mobile Expert Interview Series: ClickSoftware’s Founder Dr. Moshe BenBassat

I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Moshe BenBassat, Founder of ClickSoftware yesterday about the release of their lastest version of ClickMobile called ClickMobile Professional.  He was calling from Israel where they have been having some very stormy winter weather over the past week. 



Kevin:  Tell me about the new version of ClickMobile Professional that you announced today.
Dr. BenBassat:   What makes this version unique is that it uses HTML5 to become device agnostic.  It has what I call a universal mobile client that can run on and support all the major mobile operating systems, plus device specific features, offline/online and data syncing capabilities.


ClickMobile Professional



Dr. BenBassat:   ClickSoftware is supporting SUP. SUP provides beautifully executed integration with SAP and many other business solutions and databases. You can extract business objects into a mobile application very efficiently. Once ClickSoftware receives the business object, ClickMobile provides the development capabilities to add mobile client business logic, mobile business processes and mobile application design.  We work very well together.  ClickSoftware focuses on the mobile business applications and frameworks, and Sybase on the mobile infrastructure frameworks.  Together our solutions are very powerful.




Dr. BenBassat:  A BlackBerry (for email and calendars) and an iPad.  The iPad has become indispensable to me.  I constantly write notes and conduct internet research on it.  The best feature about my iPad is the “instant on” capability.

Kevin:  How did you get involved with enterprise mobility?
Dr. BenBassat:  I have been working on optimizing workforce scheduling for over 20 years. When I started there were no mobile solutions. Field services technicians used paper. They would get their assignments and disappear for the rest of the day.  You never heard from them.  When their work was done they often went home. You saw them the next day. Mobile devices allowed you to talk during the day and revise schedules and plans, then came mobile applications and mobile data solutions. ClickSoftware came up with the idea of real-time service optimization. Intra-day schedule changes became feasible. This is not so important for small companies, but when you have 1,000 or 2,000 service technicians in the field this is critical.  If you can optimize 2,000 schedules during the day, then this can represent a massive ROI.

Now we have gone far beyond scheduling.  We have expanded into mobile sales and mobile marketing capabilities.  Mobile timesheets is another new area we are supporting.  We are working on a mobile timesheet solution for a large utility now.