Corporate mobile technologies

The largest projects in the field of mobile technologies for 2011-2013.

For a start we will consider what occurs in the industry. Four main categories of projects which will save the relevance till 2013.

• Monitoring panels for the executive management. Here financial and operational reports and also other key data which are required for executive heads belong. Data arrive on mobile devices from corporate systems for business management and from applications of a business intelligence.
• Efficiency of sales on places and customer relationship management. Today there is a set of the applications facilitating service of the acting clients, maintaining potential clients, creation of offers and the conclusion of transactions by sales and service specialists.
• Inventory management. Use of mobile technologies in work of a warehouse and processes of distribution allows to increase productivity and gives to key experts an opportunity to immediately obtain state-of-health data of stocks.
• Applications for a back office. Various applications for a back office allow to optimize internal processes, for example the reporting on costs, calculation and salary payment, holidays of employees, medical support, etc.

Wide circulation of available and powerful mobile devices (many of which belong to employees) opens possibilities of corporate mobility practically for any company. In many cases use of mobile applications is just necessary. However unlike the large companies of SMB company are forced to solve problems and to eliminate the restrictions connected generally with the shortage of personnel and financial resources.

Recently in SAP the group of experts was collected to consider the main problems of corporate mobility for SMB companies and to develop approaches which will allow clients of SAP with benefit for themselves to use the future changes and the opening opportunities. Below four aspects which need to be considered when implementing "mobile" projects, and the corresponding recommendations of our experts are described.

1. Employees impose very high requirements to IT

Prior to the beginning of an era of corporate mobility of the company, as a rule, used user and package software, provided by IT department. All productivity applications were stored and used on servers and the PC of the company.

The konsyyumerization of IT became a reality of our time. Most of the employees participating in corporate mobile projects already work with the smartphone or the tablet computer and independently select applications for increase in efficiency (instead of working with the products provided by the company).

That is why it is so important to consider opinion of users. You should be ready to provide to the employees more convenient and more effective solutions, than standard corporate desktop applications which were relevant five years ago. Naturally, success of your undertaking depends on acceptance of a new product by users therefore their interests should be considered throughout all development process.

Experts of SAP recommend to study the current reference indicators characterizing work of users and to continuously perform a research and market monitoring to stay in the know of the most perfect mobile user applications today. It is necessary to use all available means as much as possible to approach reference indicators.

2. Forecasting of requirements to resource management and changes

In terms of IT resources projects on implementation of corporate mobile technologies considerably differ from all other IT projects. Think how many times in recent years you changed the mobile phone. Other employees probably did the same. Besides, infrastructure and standards of mobile technologies change much quicker, than standards and infrastructure of databases and corporate applications.

However it is necessary to do everything possible in order that the unrolled corporate mobile solution as long as possible saved the relevance. For this purpose it is necessary to select perspective and reliable technologies and to competently perform long-term planning (without being limited to one-two applications).

Besides, it is important to consider social value of similar projects and the related cultural changes. If your employees do not work under the same roof, to you, perhaps any more, it is necessary to review the strategy of the organization of team work, internal processes of interaction and also standards of employee performance and the corresponding expectations.

3. Solution of new security concerns and management

Staff of the different companies even more often uses the mobile devices for the solution of crucial business challenges. Considering the begun recently rapid growth in a segment of tablet computers (for example, iPad), one may say, that in the future this trend will remain. The complexity is that on the same mobile device (which can be purchased by both the company, and employees) both corporate, and personal data will be stored. Such situation considerably complicates management of corporate assets.

Smartphones are not desktop computers. We are not tired to say that mobile device management should become one of key tasks of your organization in the field of security. Implementation of the innovative mobile technologies providing competitive advantages for employees should be performed in parallel with the effective IT management helping to ensure data security and assets of your organization.

One of experts of SAP notes that most efficiently reduction of risk of security, connected with "mobile" projects, use of the architectural approach to management of mobile systems based on industry practicians is. Most of modern heads have no sufficient knowledge in this industry therefore it is recommended to consult on this matter with reliable IT experts.

4. Plans for expansion of the mobile enterprise

Often mobile projects are implemented spontaneously. Everything begins with entering by the employee of the simplest tasks which are web and given in the smartphone for the solution, and after a while we already have tens of appendices of different level of technical complexity servicing different departments.

Sometimes we deal in about tens of software applications from different suppliers, the separate information available to other systems is stored in each of which. Until the number of the mobile applications used in your company outgrew number of her employees, we recommend to form a special team and to develop the plan which will provide a project success.

Many heads consider that for each business process it demands separate mobile application. SAP, in turn, allows to use one mobile solution providing to your employees all necessary information depending on their role in your organization and the access rights appropriated to them.

If afterwards it is required to add new, customized applications, expansion of the set packet of SAP, most likely, will be the most economic method of building of mobile resources of your company. Create a uniform source of reliable information and provide the accuracy of data much simpler if they are stored in one place.

Experts of SAP recommend to unroll the strategic platform providing support of a heterogeneous IT environment and flexibility and scalability of this Wednesday for implementation in it mobile projects. It will allow to develop with confidence complete mobile solutions for your company and to react quickly to the changing requirements in the field of business and technologies.

For the last decade SAP company and its partners in implementing solutions helped tens of thousands of the companies to transform processes of management of sale and customer interaction, to strengthen the competitive advantages and to stimulate growth of total sales and net profit. These companies still address SAP, SAP Sybase and partners of diggings for achievement of effective objectives in the field of corporate mobile technologies. We recommend to you to address the partner of SAP in implementing solutions for discussion of further actions.

Mobile offers of SAP for SMB companies

The stated above examples give an idea of what opportunities open solutions for business management and an e-business intelligence of SAP in combination with mobile applications. Of course, in one article of the newsletter it is impossible to describe all available options, but we will try to tell you about the most important changes concerning the main mobile solutions for the enterprises briefly.

• SAP Business One Mobile application of SAP Business One provides you and your command access to the most relevant business information, allowing to increase productivity and efficiency of the employees working outside office. It is not difficult to begin work with the application at all – to get access to reports in real time, to the information about clients and stocks and many other, it is enough to users of SAP Business One 8.8 to load free mobile application in iTunes shop. Clients who do not use SAP Business One can test the application in an attraction mode, having loaded it in App Store shop.
• SAP Business ByDesign the SAP solution Business ByDesign proposed on the Software as Service model allows to use a cloud business system of the enterprise on mobile devices together with applications for sales management and a warehouse and also for the solution of managerial tasks, such as different statements, armoring of time and travel costs, reporting and analytics. SAP Business ByDesign also allows partners to create new cloud applicaions for mobile devices with ability to integrate with the initial solution using new means of SAP Business ByDesign Studio. Users of SAP Business ByDesign can buy these cloud applicaions in SAP Store shop. Mobile applications are supported by the devices iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and mobile devices working running Windows Mobile 7.
• SAP Business All-in-One SAP and Sybase and also powerful ecosystem of partners of these companies, offer the wide range of mobile applications and a core infrastructure with unsurpassed abilities to integrate into the systems of SAP. All this provides secure access to business processes at any time, in any place and from any device. The SAP solutions Business All-in-One are created on the basis of the integrated SAP applications of Business Suite and solutions of a business intelligence SAP BusinessObjects therefore they can be used with mobile applications of SAP, such as SAP Field Service, SAP Retail Execution, Sybase Mobile Sales for Sap of CRM and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite and Mobile Analytics. Besides, these solutions are combined with the numerous mobile applications of partners of SAP available on SAP EcoHub.
• The business analyst of SAP Today when many specialists have to work out of office, needs to be provided a possibility of adoption of crucial solutions on the way. For this purpose the information access (project schedules, data on available resources and key performance indicators) in real time is required. The SAP solutions BusinessObjects provide to key staff of your organization access to crucial data irrespective of location of the first. An opportunity to work with crucial analytical data from familiar mobile devices increases competitiveness of your organization in the modern global business environment functioning without breaks and days off. Safety is ensured due to enciphering of the data transferred on wireless networks and local data storage on mobile devices. In the PC World magazine for November, 2010 our solution was included in the "Fifteen Leading Applications of IPad for Work" list.

How to take the next step in the world of mobile technologies

There is a set of strategy and methods using which your company can implement mobile technologies in key business processes, however it is impossible to forget also about numerous difficulties on this way. In the second article of July issue of the newsletter for SMB companies we will tell about four key aspects which need to be considered when planning any "mobile" projects. Read the following article to learn more about these aspects and to study our recommendations about them.