The Mobile Workplace

Daniel Schoonmaker

KENTWOOD — Mobile Office Inc. is the black sheep of the neighborhood. Nestled into its three-year-old location on Airwest Drive off of 44th Street in Kentwood, it is within spitting distance of a half-dozen office furniture companies or suppliers, including the industry-leading Steelcase Inc.

"Here we are in the land of Steelcase, Herman Miller, Haworth — all the big boys building cubicles for office system design," said Kevin Bart, the firm's sales director. "And we're the only one building office systems for outside."

Mobile Office withdrew from the NeoCon commercial furnishings trade show a number of years ago. Although the shows were always successful, it was discouraging how office designers would not take its AutoExec passenger-seat workstation for vehicles seriously.

If the workplace keeps going in the direction it has, there is little doubt the 11-year-old firm will have the last laugh.

The number of mobile workers in the United States is expected to top 105 million this year, according to research firm IDC. By contrast, the number of stationary workers will decline to nearly 53.8 million. Already, the U.S. work force is roughly two-thirds mobile. The number of mobile professionals should top 24 million.

"You see all these companies trying to reinvent the wheel," said David Lippert, director of marketing. "How many different adaptations of the cubicle have you seen? You can make it transparent or you can completely close it in like a bubble, but it doesn't change that your workers aren't going to be in them."

Lippert likes to read the employment ads in the newspaper. Of the professional positions available, he sees a common thread.

"They just say 'road warrior.'"

When the company launched a decade ago, founder Chuck Lippert knew there was a need for a car-based workstation. In the time since, laptop sales have surpassed traditional notebook computer sales, and the advent of cellular phones, broadband Internet and Wi-Fi has enabled workers in many cities to literally pull off the highway and patch into a company network.

Realizing that productivity is wasted by anchoring traveling salesmen or other field workers to the office, companies are shedding the real estate these professionals might have occasionally occupied.

"Our biggest problem is that people are mobile, but they don't know there is a better way yet," Bart said. "They say, 'Here's your portable printer, laptop, PDA, cell phone. Now go out and sell and don't come back, because if you're here, you're not selling.'

"But Ford and Chevy don't make cars to work that way — imagine giving somebody in an office building two chairs and saying, 'That's your office.'"

As Bart explained, companies tend to forget about the salesman on the road for 60,000 miles a year. Mobile Office caters to them with its line of 10 passenger-seat workstations. With names like Grip Master and File Master, the desks provide a means of organizing and securing hardware and other materials. Accessories such as a power converter and ergonomic slide extension are available.

To date, all of the company's 30,000-unit annual sales have come via its GoOffice.com Web site, from direct sellers, and from catalogs such as SkyMall and Galls Law Enforcement. With the introduction of the $69 mDesk later this year, the first AutoExec priced under $100, Mobile Office hopes to have its long-awaited entry into the mass market. The firm is currently in negotiations to place the smaller, more affordable desk in office furniture retail locations across the nation.

"Once we're on the store shelf, people are going to know there is a better way," Bart said.

At first glance, the AutoExec appears to be perhaps the most dangerous accessory available to the mobile professional — an invitation to work while driving. That couldn't be further from the truth, Bart said.

People are going to do that without the AutoExec, he explained, and will eventually have an accident because of it. One client came to Mobile Office with 25 percent of its sales force logging accidents the previous year. The problem was that the laptop, whether open or closed, would slip off the seat during a hard turn or brake. The driver would instinctively try to retrieve it or at least be distracted by the tumbling computer, and crash.

That company used AutoExec as the centerpiece of a nationwide safety campaign.

Another client is in the midst of deploying 2,000 AutoExecs customized for its utility-locating service. Concerned that workers would use the laptops at home or while driving, the company asked Mobile Office to devise a solution. With the help of a local software company, a piece of hardware was added that turns off the laptop screen when the car is in "Drive" and allows its use only when the key is in the ignition.

In addition to salesmen, AutoExec is popular among insurance claims adjustors, general construction contractors, law enforcement officials and real estate agents. It is particularly strong in the pharmaceutical market.

In the coming years, the company's product line could as much as double, Bart said, adding options for the trunk and steering wheel and reintroducing options for countries that drive on the left side of the road. He said the company has no serious competition outside of Joto Desk, a company that makes units that are bolted into the floor of the vehicle.     BJX