Grabba Takes PDAs And SmartPhones To The Next Level For Enterprise

Published 3rd June 2008

Grabba International is working hard to make life easier for business, with its range of attachments for PDAs and SmartPhones...

“Grabba has been working very hard for the past few years on building our markets domestically and internationally, incorporating the very latest technology and also listening to the needs of our customers,” says CEO Frank Downes.

“Our business success can be attributed to the hard work of our core group of engineers and designers, who have taken a clever idea and turned it into a device that empowers business users to maximise the data-capturing power of a wide range of PDAs and SmartPhones.”

Grabba International is a world-leading developer, manufacturer and marketer of a range of business tools, including barcodes scanners, smartcard and magnetic strip card readers, and technology to read and write to RFID cards and tokens.

How can Grabba work for your business?
Grabba accessories, which are sold world-wide, are strong, elegant and hard-wearing and capture business data accurately, instantly and efficiently, assiting business owners to reduce costs and increase staff productivity.

Use a Grabba attachment with your PDA or SmartPhone to assist with the following:
• Increase your business security through membership or ID verification
• Track purchases through customer loyalty programs
• Place and manage orders on-the-road – save valuable time
• Document use of tools and equipment in your business by customers and staff
• Ideal for use in crowded point-of-sale environments, e.g. trade shows
• Streamline stocktaking.

The dreaded stocktake
How many business people loathe the end-of-month or end-of- financial year stocktake?

Stocktakes and inventory control is now made easy with the use of Grabba devices such as the T6200, being put through its paces at John Bradley Retravision in Townsville, Queensland.

Peter Waddell, the systems administrator from John Bradley Retravision says that what used to take two people up to four days to complete, now takes a team of staff a little over three hours. “We can’t believe how easy it now is to get a very accurate picture of where our stock levels are at,” Mr Waddell says. “When we used to undertake a manual stocktake, it was a slow and laborious process, with a high chance of human-error occurring.

“Now, with our Grabbas we have a good level of accuracy; the human-error factor is basically removed, there is no extra keying of data. Once staff scans the product barcodes with the Grabba barcode scanner, it goes straight into our server. What more can I say, the boss is impressed!” he says.

John Bradley Retravision worked in collaboration with Pronto Software, an Australian-based business with over 30-years experience building robust, mission-critical Enterprise Resource Planning products.

According to Mr Waddell, in the near future, John Bradley Retravision will be developing the Grabba T6200 and Pronto Software package further to remove the need for shop-floor PC stations. “Eventually we’d like to get to a stage where each of our salespeople can have a PDA capable of checking stock and making an order and invoice right there in front of the customer.”

Grabba S-Series – latest business technology
Grabba attachments combine seamlessly with PDAs and SmartPhones creating a powerful enterprise tool.
• Fitted with its own rechargeable, long-life battery a Grabba is suitable for heavy workloads without adverse impact upon the battery life of the PDA or SmartPhone
• Sophisticated battery management technology allows the PDA or Smartphone to be left attached while battery charging of both units takes place, ensuring battery life is maximised.
• The Grabba S-Series attachments are designed to work with PDAs and Smartphones that have only USB connectivity. The Grabba uses a standard mini-USB plug to connect with all the latest PDAs and Smartphones.
• The S-Series Grabbas feature Pass-through Sync Mode which allows the PDA or Smartphone to be connected to a computer (e.g., to create an ActiveSync connection), while still housed in the Grabba attachment, using the standard mini-USB connector in the Grabba.
• The Grabba Advanced Linear Imaging Barcode Scanner uses an Intermec scan engine with built-in Intermec hardware decoding. Intermec hardware decoding improves readability of poorly printed and damaged barcodes, as well as an increased number of supported symbologies. With no moving parts the Linear Imaging scanners are impressively durable and reliable, yet incredibly fast and powerful operating with a scan speed of 200 scans per second in full darkness to bright sunlight conditions. And with Intermec’s ‘laser-free’ Active Pixel Sensor technology, it means that they are totally safe.
• Grabba Drivers and SDKs are freely available for download. The Grabba Driver ‘Keyboard Wedge’ feature allows barcodes or proximity cards to be scanned or magnetic stripe track data to be read, directly into a focused text field in any application on the PDA. The Grabba SDKs allow developers to fully integrate Grabba support into enterprise applications for mobile devices.

Grabba customisation
Increasingly, businesses are not willing to accept, or able to locate suitable off-the-shelf solutions for business needs.

“Every month, we are receiving calls either directly from business or from software developers,” Mr Downes says. “Enterprise is not willing to spend large sums on solutions that may not be exactly tailored to its needs, and do not hesitate in seeking exact need-matched products.

“Our engineering team is working in a range of industries, such as retail, transport, travel, automotive and hospitality to come up with solutions that meet the current needs of a business, but also that can be upgraded or adapted for the future.”

One such example is Data Consultants Australia (DCA) that is currently using a Grabba-customised solution as part of a yet-to-be announced transport project.

”We are very impressed with Grabba business model” says Paul Carboon from DCA.

“It has allowed us to use Grabba resources in the development phase of the project. Grabba is incorporating DCA Intellectual Property inside the Grabba-customised product. As a part of the agreement, Grabba is managing product manufacture, ordering, shipping, and remedying any product bugs. That’s what I call smart!’ he says.

“Grabba staff is honest, informative, flexible, they listened and understood DCA’s requirements, the cost was very competitive, and the product is of an excellent standard.”