MOBILITY is a big theme in IT - having access to email and business data on the move is becoming a "must have" for most.

It is fascinating how quickly things are developing - you can now use a laptop, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) like an iPod or a Blackberry, or the latest smart phones to get your email and a whole lot more. Whatever next?

It is also interesting how businesses are using this technology to do more than just email.

There's a great story about a construction company which issued all of its site personnel with an iPod so that they could complete job record cards as each part of the job was finished, and send them immediately into their accounts department.

This replaced the old manual style of data collection, where job cards were sent at the end of the week up to head office for manual entry into the system. The benefit to the company was that they were able to bill the customer much more efficiently and this helped cashflow.

However, there were some technical difficulties with the new system. One of the team repeatedly sent his iPod back for repairs and nobody could work out why he seemed to be the only person having problems.

The manufacturer became involved and the engineer decided to visit the site to talk to the unlucky user. When he visited, the fellow was in the process of hanging a door and the engineer spotted that the door was actually resting on an iPod.

When questioned, the worker said that not only was the iPod a great way to submit job sheets, but he had discovered that an iPod is exactly the same size as the required gap beneath a door - so it also doubled up as a prop when hanging doors.

Because TSG is a specialist in business software, we are finding more and more new ways to help businesses do a lot more than just email on the move. Accounts and CRM data can also now be accessed securely, making a real difference to service provision and business process efficiency.

We're still working on a better technology solution for hanging doors - I'll let you know how that goes!

Mark Joynson is regional managing director of IT specialists Technology Services Group. TSG provides consultancy, computer networks, software, training and service to over 1,000 businesses across the North-East.