Mobile SAP Apps for Sales Order Capture and Delivery

Banks Holdings Limited (BHL), a SAP customer, is one of Barbados' most successful public companies and the island's largest beverage conglomerate.  BHL has four subsidiaries comprising of two beverage manufacturers, a dairy processing plant and a distribution firm.

BHL has recently mobilized three key SAP business processes:

1. Pre-Selling - The Pre-Selling scenario enabled the capture and confirmation of new orders by the mobile salesforce as they interacted with the end customers, giving them visibility into their individual orders and pricing structures.  By delivering SAP pricing schemas to the mobile device, BHL's sales representatives now have the ability to highlight to customers any volume scale based price breaks and a potential for cross selling opportunities.
2. Dispatch - Dispatch is responsible for managing the inventory required to fulfill the orders being delivered on a daily basis.  Leveraging the SAP FIFO and guided picking processes, the mobile dispatch process ensures the correct stock is not only loaded into the correct delivery truck but also in the most efficient order for the actual deliveries being fulfilled.
3. Delivery - The delivery process is responsible for the Proof of Delivery (POD) process to the end customers. The mobile component not only manages core delivery processes, but also allows for any last minute adjustments to a delivery requested by a customer and the corresponding downstream SAP pricing impacts these changes may have.

BHL wanted a solution that could meet the following requirements:

• The ability to work both online and offline when mobile staff is beyond mobile device coverage boundaries.
• Support for multiple device types such as Motorola’s hand-held devices and printers.
• Integration without the need for complex middleware.
• Flexibility of the GUI interface.
• In-depth SAP experience.
• The ability to extend SAP specific business processes to the point of activity (mobile)
• The ability to utilize existing SAP ABAP skills kept cost of enhancements low as any future changes and enhancements could be performed in-house.

SAP has a number of mobility partners including Sybase, RIM, Sky Technologies, Sylco and Vivido Labs. In this case BHL selected SAP Certified Partner, Sky Technologies for their mobile SAP CRM.

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Kevin Benedict
Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant, Mobile Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
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http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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