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Showing posts with the label mobile software

Innovation and Mobile Applications in Lisbon

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I had the honor of speaking in Lisbon, Portugal last week on mobile strategies, Code Halos and digital transformation.  When possible I try study up on the location I am traveling as I recognize it as a special treat that should not be overlooked.  In this short video I share some of my observations about technology innovation, mobile solutions and Portuguese history.  Enjoy! Video Link: http://youtu.be/_G8pQ06lI6g?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant View my profile on LinkedIn Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Browse the Mobile Solution Directory Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies Recommended

Mobile App Design Is Irrelevant - Latest Research

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Your mobile app design is irrelevant if your back-end systems can't support the real-time requirements of the user.   A recent report* by CIO Strategic Marketing Services states that most customer and employee mobility applications are integrated with back-end systems.  Although that is not necessarily a surprise, it is useful to see the average number of apps that are connected to different back-end systems.  Here are the numbers from the survey. Question: How many of your company's mobile apps for both customers and employees integrate with the following back-end systems? (average number of apps) 4.8 apps per survey participant connect to a CRM systems (including sales, customer service and marketing) 4.8 apps per survey participant connect to an Ecommerce system 4.6 apps per survey participant connect to an ERP (including project management system) 4.4 apps per survey participant connect to a supply chain, logistics or operations system 4.0 apps per survey part

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Mobile Development Models

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In this segment of "Kevin Benedict's Video Comments" I share the six different models for enterprise mobility apps.  If there are more, please share so I can add them to the list.  These six take different levels of development, different designs and support models. ************************************************************* Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups Read The Mobility News Weekly Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Planning Your Next Mobile Development Project: Best Practices, Hidden Risks

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I would like to invite you to join T. L. Neff and me as we present a webinar on the subject of Planning Your Next Mobile Development Project on Thursday, October 20th at 1 PM EDT.  Developing mobile apps brings a new set of challenges and processes that IT teams must be prepared to address.  We’ll focus on the key areas across the software development lifecycle where mobile development differs from traditional IT projects.  • Learn how to balance project planning and software development processes against today’s constantly changing business and technical requirements for mobile solutions. • Learn about best practices in defining requirements for mobile apps. • Avoid the hidden risks in building out and managing the infrastructure to test and deploy mobile apps. Click here to register! ************************************************************* Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com Follow me

Building Compliance Features into Your Enterprise Mobility Solution, Part 1

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One of the many challenges that companies have is managing a mobile workforce that is often working on remote and distant jobsites.  Many important parts of the business can be impacted by how the mobile workforce does their job while in these environments.  This article will discuss how mobile enterprise applications, with integrated compliance monitoring and prompting, can help companies manage remote and mobile work forces. Customer Service in Remote Locations The experience the customer has with your company is directly determined by how they are treated by the company representative they meet.  Often the onsite worker is the only face to face interaction the customer ever has with a person from your company.  The way the customer is treated and the services that are preformed can make all the difference between a good and bad experience and referral business.   How do you ensure that best practices are being followed in remote worksites? Jobsite Safety Jobsites can oft

SAP to Acquire Sybase, Day 3 - Kevin Benedict's Thoughts and Analysis

There have been several additional comments made in the past 24 hours that seem to shed light on the thinking behind SAP's intent to acquire Sybase.  These statements seem to be highlighting three specific themes: A shift from desktop to mobile devices A goal to connect with billions of mobile users Support for all leading mobile devices In a comment yesterday on the Linkedin group SAP Enterprise Mobility  (you should all join), Sam Lakkundi, Sybase's Chief Architect said, "Moving from the Desktop Computer to a Mobile Device is the new path for enterprise computing that I vision."  In an email exchange between myself and Bonnie Rothenstein, Head of SAP's Enterprise Mobility Communications, Bonnie said, “We’re excited about our intent to acquire Sybase, as we believe the acquisition will enable SAP to accelerate our plans to deliver SAP’s industry leading business applications and analytics offerings to billions of mobile users on any device .”  Add these hi

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Leapfactor's Lionel Carrasco

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I was in Miami, Florida a few weeks ago and was able to meet up with Lionel Carrasco and do some sailing. Lionel Carrasco is the CEO and founder of Leapfactor , an Enterprise mobility player and partner of SAP. Lionel shared his thoughts and insights while the sun was setting over Miami. I asked Lionel how he originally got into the mobility industry. He explained that he managed the development, as an SAP systems integrator CTO, of a number of large enterprise mobility projects in the Direct Store Delivery, Logistics Execution, and Sales Force Automation space. These projects were in the USA, Latin America, and Europe. In the course of designing, developing, deploying and supporting these applications, he learned much. He believes this experience will be invaluable to SAP and Leapfactor customers. I asked Lionel how he would describe Leapfactor. He answered that Leapfactor understands that cloud computing and mobility should come together. This joining together will enable large ent

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: 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. 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 p

Mobile Expert Interview Series: EntryPoint’s Pete Martin

Pete Martin, the founder of EntryPoint Consulting worked for SAP for over five years. He managed field operations in his region which included sales and pre-sales. His consulting company, which was founded in 2003, resells SAP solutions to US based middle market companies and business units of the Fortune 1000. They focus on SAP CRM, an area where they have a lot of experience. Today mobility is a big issue for his customers. Pete was involved in one of the first mobile SAP CRM implementations. It did not go well. Why? SAP did not have a well defined interface for CRM at that time. There was about five different ways to interface with it and this caused confusion with all involved. SAP did not have a strong mobility roadmap or good guidance at the time. It was a case of you don't know what you don't know. Broadband internet was not widely available and connection and synchronization speeds were slow. The customer wanted to download huge price books and massive amounts of custo

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Nokia's John Choate

I had the pleasure of interviewing Nokia's John Choate last week. He is working in the Augmented Reality (AR) space for mobile applications at Nokia's office in San Francisco. Isn't that a cool area to focus on? John's title is PMO 2.0. (Program Management Organization), and he works with the hardware and software sides of the Nokia business to bring them together and to define new technologies and solutions. A funny side note - Nokia's offices are so high in an office building that their phones have a difficult time getting good reception and Nokia employees only use mobile phones. As a result Nokia employees are running around the office trying to find good reception. I must add that any mobile phone at that altitude, at that location, is likely to have the same challenges. It was just a reminder that there is more work to be done and that disconnected mobile smartphone applications are still needed, even in downtown areas. Can you image a field service technicia

Advice for Mobile Start-ups: Working with SAP, Part 5

Part 4 of this series may have demoralized some mobile start-ups hoping to work closely with SAP, but Part 5 in this series provides solutions to many of the challenges identified in Part 4. Let's now take a closer look at some of the comments I made in Part 4. The SAP customer is simplifying their IT infrastructure to reduce complexity and no non-SAP technology will be added unless it is approved by 17 business and IT committees. Who has the time to fight this battle? Embed your solution in SAP so it becomes a part of SAP and avoids these issues ( Sky Technologies , a Certified SAP Partner embeds their mobile solutions in SAP) Simply provide a mobile application or iPhone view of SAP's current applications (Mobile micro-apps) The IT Managers only want to learn mobile technology that will add to their resume and help them get their next assignment. The cool mobile technology that they just witnessed does not have its own category on the IT recruiters' websites. They want NA

Advice for Mobile Start-Ups: Working with SAP, Part 4

SAP can be like a giant aircraft carrier moving powerfully across the ocean. It is huge and heavy and if you are a swimmer in the ocean trying to make it change directions to suite your purposes, good luck. A more successful approach is to understand the direction the ship is going and jump on board. Sign on, offer them a hand and help them get there. Perhaps as you gain their confidence they will let you into the wheelhouse where you can learn about their intended strategies and influence future directions. Mobile software companies and their entrepreneurs often feel their mobile technology and strategy is better than all others. They often feel driven by a messianic mission to carry their mobile technology message to the world, and then scream in frustration when others don't seem to "get it." I understand. I have screamed. Mobility entrepreneurs are often focused on their specific mobile technology. Many have engineering backgrounds and believe they have solved a signi

Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms, SAP and Marketing

Yesterday I was reading Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms. It was interesting to me that one of the points Gartner considers before including a MEAP vendor in their report is marketing . They consider the following: Success at marketing (I am guessing it is measured by sales?) Market awareness (name recognition within a target market) Marketing strategy (if Gartner is convinced you have a good strategy) Your ability to recruit a good partner ecosystem and support it through marketing Think about it. You invest millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man/woman hours into your products, middleware , synchronization technologies, SAP integration methodologies, databases, device management dashboards, rapid application development environments and multi-channel support for dozens of mobile devices, but that is not enough. Gartner is going to evaluate your marketing before including you in their report. Gartner understands what many smart e

In Remembrance of the PDA

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How long has it been since you stopped using the term PDA ? It occurred to me the other day that the PDA has played an important part in my career and I should not let it pass away without a ceremony of some sort. The PDA has been replaced by iEverything and smartphones . However, it was an important gadget that paved the way for the mobile technology advances of today. It opened our minds to the possibilities of keeping on task, even with poor memories. It helped generations of soccer moms remember where each child was dropped off and when they needed to be recovered. It allowed us men to seem organized despite ourselves. PDAs started the concepts of software applications, music and photos in our pockets. PDAs kicked-off companies like Palm and motivated people like me to begin blogging. Let us be silent for 30 seconds in rememberance of the PDA. We can quietly bow our heads and reach down into our pockets and try to remember the last place we used our stylus before it disappear

Advice to Mobile Start-ups: Working with SAP, Part 1

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I was invited to spend time on SAP's rain soaked campus in Palo Alto, California last week and met with people from several different groups to discuss mobile computing, mobile strategies and how mobile start-ups can best partner with SAP. This article reviews some of those discussions. One of the first points to understand is that SAP LOVES mobility. In December SAP announced that one of their key focuses for 2010 would be mobility. I wrote about SAP's announcement here in December. What this means is SAP is looking for partnerships with mobile software companies that will extend the reach of their core software to more users. Let's talk about what that means. SAP is one of the largest software companies in the world and traditionally they have focused on selling to the largest global companies. They have been successful in this strategy, but even with their successes, they still have relatively few users in each of their customers' operations. Some estimates have

Advice to Mobile Start-ups: Focus on Mobile Content, Mobile Business Processes, Integration and Workflow

The mobile and wireless industries have changed dramatically in the past year and this has significantly changed the market for mobile application start-ups. Many of the missing application development tools and features that forced programmers to develop their own proprietary mobile middleware , have been filled by the mobile OS (operating system) developers over the past 12 months. This is both good and bad news for mobile start-ups. The good news is that mobile application developers can focus more on providing business value, rather than coding clever mobile client and mobile middleware features. This is good for the entrepreneurs that have started with an existing back-office business application in mind and simply wants to support it with a mobile client. The bad news is that many mobile application companies have already invested heavily into their own mobile client technology, mobile application development tools and mobile middleware platforms. Why is this bad? Because most

The Downside of Mobile Applications

I had the fortunate opportunity to meet a classmate for coffee this week. I had not seen him for over a decade. He serves as a traffic cop and uses a TDS Recon mobile handheld computer in the course of his work writing tickets. During our conversation we discussed the rugged laptop he had mounted in his unmarked police cruiser. He said it had many of their police forms and documents on it, but that the mobile software was not able to keep up with the required edits and changes needed on the forms. As a result, they had stopped using it for much of their documentation. This discussion highlighted the need for a mobile workflow application that is a separate layer from the data layer. The field data collection requirements should be very simple to edit and not impact the field user. If the mobile application requires a complete update to edit data fields, then it risks early obsolescence or as in my earlier example it will simply not be used. - Kevin Benedict, Mobile Strategies Consul

Analysis - SAP's Emerging Mobility Strategy - Fasten Your Seat Belts!

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SAP has announced this week that one of their strategic focuses for the next 5 years is mobile computing and mobile software applications according to SAP chief technology officer Vishal Sikka said. The pervasiveness of mobile computing and social networking also have SAP developing applications and extensions, which will allow wireless users to collaborate and utilize SAP and non-SAP related data for on the fly computing. I write wireless industry analyst reports and provide consulting on mobile strategies so have been keeping a careful eye on this market. It is moving at warp speed now! After many years of mostly small software companies in the mobile enterprise software applications market, the big kahunas are jumping in with both feet and this will change the industry. Read a few of these article titles: Verizon Takes the Complexity Out of Managing Mobility in the Enterprise AT&T Extends Mobile Enterprise Application Platform to Consumer Goods and Hospitality Markets The Clic

Mobile Field Services, Cross-Selling and Enterprise 2.0

Selling more service contracts, warranties and appliances were three reasons Sears gave for mobilizing their field service technicians in this recent article . Cross-selling is also a key to successful field services organizations according to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management ( May 2009). Isn't it interesting how important onsite sales are for organizations that provide services? It seems that in these days of internet e-commerce, people still like to look into the eyes and talk to a real person. If that person just happened to fix your satellite TV hours before your football game, you are very happy with them. You are willing to listen to them as they make recommendations and referrals. If you are a software developer of mobile applications for Field Services Automation (FSA) you are going to have to take the notion of "sales" seriously in your application. Gartner states that leading FSA companies will need to include CRM components in their fie