Mobile Asset Management - Technology Is Not the Point

9/18/2017

Mobile is dead, they’ve said, but I heard that Otto Pulkkinen, product manager for field solution development at Trimble Energy, thinks it was never the point anyway. People are still very much alive, and need their job done.

In Otto’s words, the basic revolution in the mobile devices has reached its plateau, maturing to the point where the device no longer matters. “We're not limited to any platform or restricted to only the latest and the most powerful devices. Basically any device will do,” Otto says.

Otto Pulkkinen and the value of mobile development

Food for thought: The device doesn't matter

Looking at the big picture, Otto finds that the mobile technology development is rather stabilizing and there are no more big leaps coming. We can, now more than ever, focus on producing value with our application software.

“Instead of going technology-first, we listen to what people need."

“We are a part of the larger digitalization movement,” Otto continues. This means that in addition to the technology choices, we actually also continue doing some very basic things, like replacing paper maps and other things that have been done with pens and paper or moving people around, with something immensely more efficient by totally transforming the process to a digital one. “Instead of having a stack of papers with them, the field crews can just take whatever mobile device they happen to have, and have all the mapping and network information immediately available.”

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Otto Pulkkinen has been involved with mobile technologies since the beginning of the mobile boom in the early 1990s.

Working in various project management and product leadership roles, Otto has seen the mobile industry from the bottom up. He has been involved, for example, in developing new Nokia mobile devices, making the new mobile platform Meego, delivering health-care mobile systems for GE, and pushing forward the R&D at a start-up called Hantro.

At Trimble, Otto has worked in the product management for mobile applications such as Utility To Go®, since January 2016. He finds the passion for his work in learning what people need to get done with mobile technologies, especially when it comes to helping people get their work done – and turning that into specifications.

“I really feel energized by the thought that we are helping people in their work. That’s extremely important,” says Otto, and continues: “And these people are doing very important work, too, with electricity networks and utility networks in general. Understanding what is possible through technology and making something useful for people out of that, that's my motivation.”

To be honest, Otto, that’s actually my motivation, too. ;)

-Hanna