Crafting an Effective Enterprise Mobility

Good understanding of mobility solutions and their effective deployment can help

enterprises improve results

Enterprise

mobility is not a new concept— most businesses have been running some sort of

mobilized business processes for years now. The most established ones are

typically found in warehouses or logistics departments such as shippers and

receivers on the docks quickly scanning materials in and out of inventory. Early

innovators proved the value of mobile solutions, yielding benefits in cost

savings, customer satisfaction, supply chain flexibility, and even revenue

generation. But these early adopters also shared some challenges.

Enterprises

deploying at the dawn of enterprise mobility had to become experts themselves to

get a mobile solution up and running.  The

scenarios deployed were all custom-built and custom-maintained (think of UPS

drivers with their custom mobile tablets). The costs to deploy a solution were

high. Today, the mobile space has changed considerably. For some functions,

market adoption is so great that mobile capabilities are a competitive necessity

rather than a competitive edge. This pervasiveness brings opportunities for

standard mobility solution offerings, wider reach, and reduced costs of

deployment. In other words, it's no longer inevitable that implementing a

mobile solution will require in-house expertise or deployment resources that

normally accompany a one-off solution. Standard solutions, with minimal

customization, can achieve the same goals with lower costs when it comes to

deployment and long-term maintenance. This article offers a framework for

evaluating your mobile solution needs, and highlights a practical approach to

enterprise mobility for ERP. Customers can leverage their existing ERP

infrastructure, lower integration costs, and still meet very specific mobile

technology goals.

Considering the Three Types of

Mobile Solutions



Many companies make the mistake of taking a reactive approach to new mobile

requirements as they see a need. For example, the service management line of

business manager needs to enable all his service engineers with a mobile

solution to replace their outdated paper processes and increase the

organization's employee utilization, so they choose and deploy one of many

mobile enterprise solutions. But if every new mobile scenario requires a custom

solution, your enterprise is facing some big infrastructure and maintenance

headaches. Without understanding the complete picture, you could implement a

mobile solution that cannot easily extend to meet the enterprise mobility needs

of your entire organization. This could be a costly mistake if, for example, you

were to have multiple middleware servers each supporting their own custom mobile

solution.

A

more strategic view of mobile solutions looks for common elements across a

mobile solution set, which you could leverage for your industry or for employees

in a particular user group. With this approach, you would consider the category

of mobile functionality:

color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Standard Solutions Covering the Range of Enterprise Functions are Available Today

A mobility strategy centered on your ERP can span the following functional areas: Mobile Sales: Provides a solution for salespeople who need to perform their tasks quickly and productively Mobile Service: Enables field service engineers to react quickly to customer needs Mobile Inventory & Warehouse Management: Allows inventory managers and warehouse operators to monitor stock levels, record real-time goods transfers and track inventory along the supply chain Mobile Procurement: Enables your mobile workers to manage the entire procurement process, from price comparison to ordering Mobile Service & Asset Management: Allows in-house service engineers to access relevant business processes anywhere, anytime Direct Store Delivery: Empowers delivery personnel with the tools to service customers and manage relationships

• Functional
  
  mobile solutions, for tasks shared by a specific group of users: These
  
  include solutions for a particular team of users, such as salespeople or
  
  service teams out in the field.

• Horizontal
  
  mobile solutions, for more general uses across a company: These include
  
  expense reporting solutions such as time or travel management, or “casual
  
  use” scenarios such as key performance indicator reporting, or the ability
  
  to approve workflows on the fly.

• Industry
  
  mobile solutions, for a specific industry: Some industries today require
  
  mobility for employees to do their jobs. Manufacturers in the consumer
  
  package goods (CPG) industry, for example, might require a mobile direct
  
  store delivery solution so that they can deliver products on demand directly
  
  to retail stores, priced accordingly and based on actual onsite consumption,
  
  in real time.

• Functional
  
  scenarios attend to the needs of a particular group of users across
  
  industries but with a common function, and they frequently are among the
  
  most mission-critical tasks. Here, a single scenario can cover a lot of
  
  ground. For example, the typical mobile service scenario encompasses
  
  internal and external customer service and plant maintenance, but could
  
  support a variety of users, including sales representatives, service
  
  representatives, internal field engineers, and external service
  
  professionals

• Horizontal
  
  mobile scenarios usually serve a common business need that is felt
  
  across a wide range of roles and that can apply to almost any enterprise. An
  
  example is time and travel management, which aims to significantly reduce
  
  organizations' travel expenditures through implementation of an electronic
  
  travel policy. When this solution is used in an industry such as
  
  professional services, it can also ensure faster billing cycles, reduced
  
  errors, and quicker turnaround of expense claims.

• Industry
  
  mobile solutions can be considered “killer” applications within
  
  their respective industries.
  
  
  
  For example, the pharmaceutical industry sales force has some unique needs:
  Sales representatives maintain an electronic inventory of the drug samples
  
  they provide to medical practices and institutions. Upon delivery, sales
  
  representatives must capture a signature. A mobile solution customized for
  
  this industry enables all this to occur electronically.
  

But How to Apply?



You can start by evaluating your ERP mobility requirements based on three

key questions:

• Do
  
  I need mobile functionality that is purely industry-focused?

• Do
  
  I need a mobile solution that is role-focused, and if so, how many user
  
  roles might my organization want to deploy?

• Are
  
  there common elements across a horizontal or functional solution that would
  
  apply to my industry?

Your

answers to these questions should assist you in avoiding unnecessary complexity

and duplication in your ERP mobility strategy. For decades, ERP vendors have

been empowering businesses of all sizes with a family of adaptive business

solutions, providing best-of-breed functionality built for complete integration,

industry-specific functionality, unlimited scalability, and easy collaboration

over the Internet.

The

mobile marketplace has come a long way, and while it can be a challenging space,

it can yield great benefits. Armed with the understanding of your opportunities

and pitfalls when it comes to custom-built and customized solutions, you can

make an informed decision about how and when standard solutions can suit your

enterprise mobility needs.

-Ravi

Subramanyam, CEO, MobileOne 



mail@dqindia.com