July 10, 2003
Camera-phones bring business into focus with instant and cost-effective images.
In an example of a smart business application, an article in Entrepreneur.com describes how a Maintenance System company uses picture phones and how the handsets have contributed to bringing down costs.
"When one of Randy Sevcik's painting crews finishes a late-night job at Banana Republic or Wal-Mart, they snap pictures of their work on camera-phones and send the proof immediately off to the hiring company for billing. Sevcik, the founder, president and CEO of Chicago-based Maintenance Systems Inc., bought eight Sanyo 5300 camera-phones and signed on with Sprint PCS in January.
Sevcik finds the image quality perfectly fine for his business's needs and more than adequate to replace the digital cameras his employees used to use. Most of all, he likes the efficiency, convenience and cost savings from no longer having to ship photos overnight. "With what we saved in shipping fees and the amount we're able to communicate with our guys, the camera-phones pretty much paid for themselves in the first three weeks," he says".
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