An Enterprise Mobility Journey

Enterprise Mobility is more than just software or hardware it's a journey undertaken by business to realise the benefits of a mobile workforce. There is a beginning to the journey but more often than not no end. As with the introduction of other initiatives this journey tends to be circular. If you start from identifying a need, work through realisation, and move into support eventually new needs will arise. Of course that's why it's important to underpin all of this with a view to ongoing change management. Here is one way of categorising the key aspects of an Enterprise Mobility Journey:

• Business Case
• Product Selection
• Realisation
• Support

Enterprise Mobile Business Case

To stay in business it’s important to consider how funds are spent. Organisations of different sizes and types go through a business case process with more or less rigour. Some organisations may be capital heavy and invest in large equipment or plants. In these cases IT spending may be seen as a small insignificant part of the overall investment plan. For others money spent on IT is core to their DNA. Regardless of the company type there are always competing initiatives for funds. As well as getting a place in the investment hierarchy a business case has a number of benefits:

• Socialises concepts and aligns vision (Needs)
• Sets scope and boundaries (Requirements)
• Defines the costs and benefits (ROI)
• Acts as a reference for future stages of the mobile journey

While a business case for a mobility project can be treated in a similar fashion to any other business case. Here are a few tricks and traps to look out for:

• New technology is not well understood
• Replacing paper processes may have greater benefits than replacing an existing system
• A mobile application could form part of marketing / advertising spend
• Mobility investments often establish the basis of multiple projects

For further reading refer to these articles:

• The Benefits of Enterprise Mobility
• Business to Business Mobility

Enterprise Mobile Product Selection
At the outset it's worth mentioning that no one has a working crystal ball and it's clear to most that mobility is an area of rapid change. Often people ask me how can they trust product Z when last week product X was the leader. This is the same argument many people have when they are looking to buy a new personal mobile device or other technology. "Should I buy model X now knowing that in a few months perhaps a new model will be better?" My response is to harp back to the business case and requirements. If you know that the delivered features will enable you to achieve your business goals then you can feel comfortable. Consider when NASA built the Mars rovers they didn't look for the most recent or powerful mobile device, they used a clear list of requirements.

Of course there are a number of technical solutions to mobilising an enterprise so if the technology is new to you consider some of the following:

• Industry events (get some insight, network, and talk to experts)
• Similar non-competitive companies (perhaps another geography)
• Web & Social (plenty of people willing to help)
• Existing partner network (your solutions partners may have expertise)
• Research firms (such as Gartner or the newer crowd sourcing alternatives)
• Back end connectivity (ensure your technology integrates)
• In house talents (mobility is an exciting area for many people)
• Platform or point solution (does your case allow for future expansion)

For further reading refer to these articles:

• How to Select a Device for Enterprise Mobility
• HTML5 vs Native

Enterprise Mobile Realisation
The realisation phase of a mobile journey is where the rubber hits the road. The scope of this phase can vary widely depending on the business case, the product selected, and the implementation approach. Ensure that before too much rubber has hit the road all involved parties agree on the way forward. There maybe a big difference between leveraging an existing cloud solution and a more traditional waterfall driven software project. Regardless of how agile (or not) the project is each will (or should) have a a degree of:

• Design/Confirmation
• Build/Implement
• Test/Train
• Pilot/Deploy

During realisation is of course a key time to be referring back to that business case and most specifically the requirements. Oh and if you're looking for a great result never forget the importance of business and IT change management.
For further reading refer to these articles:

• Testing Enterprise Mobility
• Prototyping Enterprise Mobility

Enterprise Mobile Support
One of the easiest traps to fall into is to leave support to the end of the journey. It's important that support and supportability requirements are baked into the business case. Supporting mobile applications and hardware has a couple of added complexities that traditional desktop support may not have to contend with:

• Unreliable communications
• Bleeding edge technology
• Frequent change
• BYOD
• Many layered fault determination

If you have considered support up front then hopefully you have a solution that includes tools to empower your users and the support team. Finally a couple of points on the importance of baking Change Management into the entire journey. From an IT sense consider how to handle software/hardware updates and the impact of change to other systems. From a business perspective consider the people, the process, and how mobility changes the game.

SAPs mobile audience

The Apple of the enterprise? A goal for one billion users (please read that with a Dr Evil voice). Makes a lot of sense for any software licensing organisation. Of course I don't mean to be cynical and firmly believe the mobilisation of enterprise software like SAP has wide ranging benefits. Reading great articles like Joshua Greenbaum's blog you can see that there is confusion in the market wrt how SAP will effectively achieve its goal.  Buying products to expand the portfolio (like the Sybase and Syclo acquisitions) as well as leveraging partner license sales is certainly part of the strategy. For me of interest is where are the users coming from? Take a quick look at each of the mobile user categories i.e. B2E, B2B, and B2C.

B2E
Business to enterprise, typically applications that an organisation's users are doing at a desktop. SAP has quite an extensive user base entering their SAP transactions into the GUI. Certainly there is a good case to mobilise a number of these users. You could read business value of B2E applications for a few ideas. So if existing users move from the desktop GUI to a mobile device do they count towards the one billion goal?

Of course there are opportunities in greenfield and replacement projects. When an organisation is moving from legacy to SAP then most will (or should!) consider mobile as an option for some user groups. However if these users would have previously been desktop users and are now mobile users then there is a degree of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' happening with the licenses. Regardless the licensing concept is fairly simple, users tend to be named, and hence a fee can be charged per user.

B2B
Business to business, typically these applications are in the domain of 3PLs or marketing, HR and similar industries. Where by definition one company has a mobile application that is used by another company. For example a business may want an application for their customers (not the general public) to order directly or a 3PL may capture information on behalf of another company. Historically the B2B space has been achieved with interfaces, Edi, portals and the like. As with B2E the licensing can revolve around named users but sometimes there can be challenges here with subcontracting scenarios and the like. There are some great use cases for mobile B2B but compared to the final category the potential number of users is limited.


B2C
Business to consumer, the untapped holy grail of enterprise mobile applications.  How can SAP effectively provide valuable mobile applications to consumers? What is the most practical licensing model? The acquisition of the Sybase product suite has immediately brought a lot of consumer banking users under the SAP banner but what about the non-finance sector.

For example a hypothetical business sells, makes to order, and delivers goods to a customer. This business wants to provide a mobile application connected seamlessly to SAP that allows ordering, tracking, and customer self service. Here is an opportunity for SAP to add thousands of potential users to their 1 billion target. However the sticking point is that no one wants to pay for the mobile application. The app store phenomenon has set a low value expectation for mobile applications. How can SAP effectively monetize all these users?

While consumers might believe that B2C mobile applications should be free most businesses understand that they have value. Mobile apps reduce cost by moving some of the effort from employees to the consumer. Apps form part of a marketing, branding, and the advertising strategy. Dammit it's just plain expected these days.

Websites like Google, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. have done a fantastic job of grabbing an audience and these sites continue to evolve their strategies to monetise. One thing they have in common is they don't charge their audience directly to access the service. Often they make money from clever (sometimes unpopular) advertising or market research. Take the online electronic game industry that can now serve advertising between game rounds thus enabling premium games to be played for free. Consider also that in the case of programming languages arguably the most popular are free or in some cases offer premium content for a fee.

To get hold of the largest audience should SAP consider making the SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) for consumer applications free? Or charge for the platform only but not by user volume? Can their creative marketing geniuses come up with a model that would enable wide spread adoption of the platform? I'm sure ideas are being thrown around. What about mobile OS specific container application running html5 with SAP branding that was free to use for consumer applications, but a company could pay to self brand? How about a model where specific services/data sources/tables where able to be mobilised to consumers for little cost?

Over time the technologies and licensing models will continue to evolve and in a lot of ways the explosion of mobile apps is like the Internet bubble. Suddenly there is a way to reach a large potential audience along with the challenge of getting a return on investment.

Edit: For those of you mystified by SAP's licensing Sharon's blog does a great job of providing an overview of how it currently works.

Business value of B2E apps

Thanks to the consumerization of information technology and the app store phenomenon Enterprise Mobile Applications are moving away (thankfully) from clunky form driven screens. B2E apps are now expected to provide polished and guided business process with zero learning curve. This of course is a mixed blessing. On one hand there is more up front work in mobile projects to “get it right”. On the other hand when successful there are many benefits to change management, training, process conformity, and increased throughput.

If you already have a case to replace an existing desktop or paper based solution then it will pay to consider “mobile first” where the new solution has mobile components or is entirely mobile based. However if you are proposing to mobilise an existing process then it is important to concentrate on real business value to successfully compete for funds. I like to think of two general benefit categories for Enterprise Mobile Applications. Less Bad and More Good!

Less Bad

·         Eliminating double handling

·         Less paperwork

·         Less travel

·         Inventory holdings can be smaller

·         Mistakes are reduced

·         Less time to up skill new resources

More Good

·         Information is more accurate

·         Information is more timely

·         React more quickly

·         Process more work

·         Plan and schedule more accurately

·         Enable process conformity

·         Spend more time on business activity rather than on IT admin

These general buckets are great for a high level discussion. However when it comes to preparing a business case a more thorough investigation of mobile applications and functionality is required. I’ve compiled a short list by Mobile Application of some typical benefits.

Employee Self Service

Employees are empowered to enter leave/timesheet/expenses directly into their mobile device. The employees can more easily enter the activity when it happens rather than at the end of the week or month.

Benefits:

·         Reduce trips into the office just to do admin

·         Eliminate the need for a VPN token to access  a laptop remotely

·         Information is more accurate – resulting in fewer credit notes

·         Information is timelier – resulting in better planning, reporting, and resulting actions

·         Reduce double handling e.g. taking down timesheets on paper forms and sending them into the office.

·         Photograph/scan receipts directly with the expense claim

CRM / Sales

Employees can access customer and sales activity information at the point of business. Existing data can be updated or new data can be entered at the customer site.

Benefits:

·         Information (customers, activities, sales) is more accurate

·         Reduce double handling e.g. taking down notes and retyping them later

·         Act on customer leads/opportunities/sales in real time

·         Be better prepared for customer facing engagements

·         Spend more time with customers and less time in the office

Service / Plant Maintenance / Asset Maintenance

Employees can receive and view jobs in the field. Jobs can be transacted through to completion and new jobs can be created while on site. Assets can be inspected, updated, and created on the fly.

Benefits:

·         Information (jobs, assets, customers) is more accurate

·         Reduce double handling e.g. taking down notes and retyping them later

·         Easier to plan and schedule workforce

·         React to changes more quickly

·         Less need to travel to the office

·         Take payment directly in the field

·         Print customer receipts in the field

·         Scan and interface directly to data

·         Process conformity

Stock Take

Employees can capture and/or scan counts directly into a mobile device.

Benefits:

·         Reduce time to complete stocktake

·         Reduce paperwork

·         Less count errors

·         Enable more frequent stocktake

·         Enable guided and/or blind stocktakes

·         Enable cycle counting

·         Print new labels

·         Process conformity

Proof of Delivery

Enable employees to receive a schedule of deliveries on a mobile device. While on site enable the update of delivery, inventory, and AR data. Capture customer signatures and take payments at the customer location.

Benefits:

·         Reduction of paperwork

·         Information timeliness

·         Inventory accuracy

·         Improve DIFOT

·         Cash reconciliation simplified

·         AR position accuracy

·         Capture customer signature

·         Reduction of errors and credit notes

Mobile Training & Documentation

Enable employees to receive documentation out in the field to support training and/or OH&S.

Benefits:

·         Push reminders and documents to employees

·         Ensure process conformity

·         Reduce need to travel

·         OH&S

Mobile Inventory/ Warehouse Management

Enable employees to transact receipts, transfers, and other inventory movements with a mobile device and/or scanner.

Benefits:

·         Information is more timely

·         Eliminate errors

·         Eliminate reliance on paperwork

·         Scan documents, inventory, and locations

·         Improve DIFOT

Most organisations have limited funds and plenty of potential candidates for investment. Hopefully the above tips will help when formulating a case for B2E mobile applications. 

Edit 2015 - This topic has proven very popular and been syndicated across many sites. I've included a revised and more detailed version on the entire business case process in my book Enterprise Mobile Tips and Tricks

Mobility Expert Series

While I'm reminiscing I thought I'd mention some older blogs I wrote back when I worked at Sky Technologies. They currently have the series on their website Mobility Expert @ Sky Technologies

The series comprises of the following blogs:

• Spark of an idea
• The mobility project RFP
• Getting the project over the fence
• Let's get it started
• What are we building

Edit 2015

Sky Technologies website has been shutdown since it was acquired by Kony. The good news is much of the topics abover are now covered in my book Enterprise Mobile Tips and Tricks