An exploratory investigation of critical success factors in wireless field force automation projects

Wireless Field Force Automation (WFFA) is a wireless solution designed to support field staff such as service personnel, repair or installation employees, technical teams, or medical workers. Certain companies try to provide their field workers with this sort of solution to improve their productivity, their effectiveness and to reduce administrative costs, but more than 50% of these projects fail. This paper discusses the Critical Success Factors (CSF) contributing to the success of these projects. To do this, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted with ten experts in the field. The results of this study show that eight CSF are important in this kind project and that conversely to traditional, sedentary Information Systems, successful WFFA requires taking into consideration a new CSF called “management of mobility” that integrates device management, helpdesk support and mobile device fleet management.