SAP has helped thousands of the world’s largest companies deploy enterprise mobility initiatives over the past decade. Today we are helping companies with just a few million dollars in revenue achieve their mobility goals as well.
The sum of our experience? Enterprise mobility is far different than any other technology revolution that has come before it. You must be prepared, whether your company is large or small.
The proliferation of lower-cost and more powerful mobile devices—many of which employees own—has made enterprise mobility possible for virtually any company. And in most cases, it’s now an imperative as well. But unlike large companies, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) grapple with challenges and constraints driven largely by having fewer human and financial resources.
We recently gathered a group of SAP’s experts to discuss the major enterprise mobility issues for small- and medium-size companies, and how our clients can take advantage of the opportunities and changes that are no doubt heading their way. Below are four issues that you need to be aware of, and our experts’ recommendations for how to manage them to ensure the success of your mobile initiative.
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Employees Expect More from IT Than Ever Before
Before the current enterprise mobility era, companies typically used custom and packaged software delivered from the IT department. All the productivity applications were contained within the company, and used on its servers and PCs.
Today, the “consumerisation” of IT is upon us. Most employees that participate in enterprise mobile initiatives already own a smartphone or a tablet, and use productivity applications that they have personally selected (versus taking what the company provides).
This is why user experience is so important. You must be prepared to provide a higher usability standard than what traditional enterprise desktop applications delivered five years ago. Naturally, the success of your initiative relies on employee adoption, so it’s crucial that you have your users in mind throughout the entire development process.
SAP experts recommend that you know what the current user-experience benchmarks are, and continue to research and monitor the market to stay abreast of the most successful mobile customer applications today. Emulate them as much as possible, within your means.
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Anticipating Resource and Change Management Requirements
From an IT resources perspective, enterprise mobility implementations are quite different from other types of IT projects. Just think about how many times you have switched mobile phones in the past few years, and consider that every employee is probably doing the same. In addition, mobile technology standards and infrastructure are changing much faster than that of databases and enterprise applications.
However, it’s important to do everything you can to “future proof” your enterprise mobility initiative. This involves choosing built-to-last technologies and planning well beyond your next application or two.
It’s also crucial to consider the social impact and cultural changes spurred by enterprise mobility initiatives. When employees are no longer under one roof, you might have to rethink your team building strategies and internal communication processes. Also, employee performance standards and expectations might need to be revisited.
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Managing a New Realm of Security and Governance Challenges
Employees are increasingly working on business-critical tasks from their mobile devices. This trend will continue to grow with the recent explosion of tablets, such as iPads. More challenging is the fact that the same mobile device holding corporate data will also contain personal data. Sometimes your company will own the device, and sometimes your employees will. This can be very challenging from a corporate asset management perspective.
Smartphones are not the same as desktops. It cannot be emphasized enough that mobile device management should be one of your top security concerns, if it isn’t already. The introduction of innovative mobile technologies that provide employees with a competitive advantage must be balanced with IT governance that helps establish the security of your organization’s data and assets.
One SAP expert says the best way to help address the security risks inherent in mobile initiatives is to use an architecture-based mobile governance application approach that is based on current industry best practices. Of course, this topic is well beyond the knowledge of most business leaders today, so it’s suggested that consult with IT experts you trust to explore it further.
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Planning to Expand Your Mobile Enterprise
Mobile initiatives often grow organically. They usually begin by putting Web-based data onto a smartphone to help employees achieve simple tasks. Soon there can be dozens of applications serving many departments with varying levels of technical complexity.
There could easily be dozens of software applications and vendors in the mix, each with their own silo of information that’s easily accessed by other systems. Before your mobile application count gets higher than your headcount, we recommend putting a team and plan in place to ensure the highest level of project success.
Many executives think they need a new mobile application for every business process. With SAP, however, you could instead have one mobile application that avails your employees of all of the information they need based on their role in your organization and access rights assigned to them.
If you need to add new, purpose-built applications after that, extending your SAP software is usually a more cost-efficient way to scale your company’s mobile capabilities. It’s much easier to help establish data accuracy when it’s in one place, creating “a single source of the truth.”
Experts at SAP recommend that you deploy a strategic platform that supports a heterogeneous environment and provides flexibility and scalability for mobile initiatives. This lets you confidently develop end-to-end mobility solutions for your company so you can quickly respond to evolving business and technology needs.
Over the past decade, SAP and its implementation partners have helped tens of thousands of companies transform sales and customer management processes to sharpen their competitive edges and help improve top- and bottom-line growth. They continue to rely on SAP, SAP Sybase, and our partners to support them in their enterprise mobility goals.
To see SAP Business One’s mobile solutions in action, watch this video.
How can I find out more about SAP Business One?
Contact Blue Ocean Systems’ team of ERP specialists who can guide you in finding the best SAP Business One solution for your organisation.
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