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SCO Group helping FranklinCovey go paperless

Companies form strategic relationship to distribute mobile planning tools

      

FranklinCovey, which dominates the paper world with planners, calendars and other materials designed to untangle complicated business lives, has moved into the mobile space via a strategic relationship with SCO Group, a UNIX software technology and mobile services provider.


The partnership allows FranklinCovey access to SCO’s wholly owned subsidiary, Me Inc. and its mobile technology to provide smartphone users with data service to plan and coordinate schedules, track goals, set appointments, manage and delegate tasks and use multimedia from their phone or PC client. The partnership is a boon for SCO, which has been embroiled in ongoing legal wrangling over its Linux software platform and is emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“Signing deals with FranklinCovey, in light of all the issues that surround us, is a testament … to our ability to move beyond the mire and get out of this,” said SCO president- COO Jeff Hunsaker.

The deal lets FranklinCovey migrate its planning expertise to the SCO Me Inc. mobile platform where it can be marketed as a hosted service for a monthly or annual fee.

“Specifically with this deal with FranklinCovey, we developed the application in-house, built the platform in-house and we’re focusing on serving this collaborative mobile tool that works with any carrier,” Hunsaker said.

Smartphone users, he said, can download the hosted service from the Web, get a free trial and then sign up for a paid subscription. SCO, though, wants to make it easier for consumers to find and download the service by gaining mobile carrier certification and becoming an on-port application. SCO has been certified by AT&T, Hunsaker said, and is available on all other carriers.

“That is the biggest challenge,” Hunsaker said. “That’s why we started working with the carriers, with RIM (BlackBerry) and with Palm and others to work on a carrier-specific deal. That’s ultimate nirvana (because it) allows us to be on deck with those carriers so it’s available for any user of the network (with a data plan) to click on an icon and download this product.”

The product itself is a bit amorphous these days. While it clearly targets the business users who are FranklinCovey’s base of paper customers, it leans towards the growing niche of “prosumers,” the blend between the consumer and business professional who use one device for home, work and other responsibilities.

“Ubiquity is something we’re obviously after, but we’re starting in this ever-increasing niche market for smartphones. It’s where the growth is happening and we’re a key cog in that relationship,” Hunsaker said.

FranklinCovey, he said, just wants to move off the pages and onto the Web.

“They clearly have a wonderful brand as it relates to paper planners; that’s their niche,” he said. “They’re not a technology company and that is what we do; we create applications for mobile phones.”

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