FierceMobileIT: Crowd Sourcing to Become More Relevant in Enterprise Mobility

I want to highlight an article that I recently wrote that was published in FierceMobileIT today called, "Crowd Sourcing to Become More Relevant in Enterprise Mobility."  I am intrigued by the idea of connecting geographically disperse minds together to help accomplish the greater good.  Mobile technologies and crowd sourcing concepts can help in all kinds of interesting ways.

In this article I write about SAP's Streamwork, Salesforce.com's Chatter, online forums and using tweets to understand traffic conditions.

Whitepapers of Note

The Business Benefits of Mobile Adoption with SAP Systems
ClickSoftware Mobility Suite and Sybase Mobility Solution
Networked Field Services
Mobile, The Next Big Thing for Business

Webinars of Note

Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility - 10 Lessons Learned
Barcode Scanning in Mobile Apps
Five Ways to Optimize the ROI of your Mobile Solution

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly

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.

SAP StreamWork, Social Intelligence and Mobile Devices

StreamWork on a
BlackBerry

If you are not yet familiar with SAP's StreamWork solution, it is worth investigating.  As an SAP Mentor, I use this solution a lot when SAP Mentors from around the world are working on a collaborative project.  SAP StreamWork is a collaborative decision-making solution that brings together the people, information, and proven business approaches to drive fast, meaningful results.  The mobile client is marketed with the following description, "Keep collaborating with your team and driving activities forward, even if you're not at your desk."

The mobile client enables the following:

• Create an activity directly from email
• Upload content and add work items
• Add participants to an activity
• View and comment on work items
• Create and view action items

StreamWork is very intriguing to me.  A group can work on making a decision together no matter where each group member is located.  The group can create an activity and then all members can start sharing ideas and linking documents and other content to be shared with the group as tools for making decisions.  You can comment, see the profiles of members, etc.

I believe companies have never effectively taken advantage of the talent and intelligence of their organizations.  Often a person with valuable knowledge may not share it if they are not in the right geographical area, position or group.  There must be ways that you can harvest more of the social intelligence of your organization.  I think StreamWork is a step in the right direction.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

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

Salesforce.com's Chatter, Mobile Knowledge Management and Collaboration

I spent time at the CIO Council last week with Kris Muller in product marketing with Salesforce.com.  He was at the CIO conference speaking about Salesforce.com's new solution called Chatter.  Here is the official description of Chatter from Salesforce.com:

Chatter is a brand-new way to collaborate with people at work. Where the status of important projects and deals are automatically pushed to you — so you're always in the loop.

• Share securely and collaborate instantly
• Stay on top of what matters most
• Gain insight and make smarter decisions

I am a big fan of mobile knowledge management and collaboration tools and this fits right in.  It is a secure way for all members of a sales team (account reps, pre-sales, product marketing, product management, sales management, etc.) to closely follow developments on a specific account.  The team can quickly and securely share information, deal documents, collateral and discussions.

Mobile Applications for Knowledge Management, Collaboration and Human Progress

I am very interested in mobile enterprise applications that deliver collaboration and knowledge management functionality.  I believe these solutions will revolutionize businesses that use them.  I saw three of these applications at Sapphire this year that I describe later in this article. 

First let me share a very interesting article by Matt Ridley that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal on May 22-23, 2010, Humans: Why They Triumphed.  Here are some excerpts:

• Collective intelligence is the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural progress or change in a population is the amount of interaction between individuals.
• The sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination, rather, it is a collective enterprise.
• Exchange stimulated innovation by bringing together different ideas. Exchange and collective intelligence is the key to human progress.
• Once human beings started swapping things and thoughts they stumbled upon divisions of labor, in which specialization led to mutually beneficial collective knowledge. Specialization encourages and promotes innovation. 
• The process of cumulative innovation that has doubled life span, cut child mortality by three-quarters and multiplied per capita income nine-fold-world-wide in little more that a century is driven by the exchange of ideas.

Mr. Ridley believes that the interactive nature of the internet, rather than dumbing down people, will in fact lead to an explosion of new ideas and inventions! Online collaboration and the sharing of idea through blogs, tweets, online forums and discussion groups lead to an increase in knowledge.  I believe the three mobile applications that I saw at Sapphire will do just that.

The mobile collaboration and knowledge management tools that I saw at Sapphire were:

• SAP's Expert Link (a proof-of-concept for internal use only developed by Leapfactor)
• SAP's Streamworks - SAP StreamWork brings together people inside or outside your organization with information for fact-based decision-making and interactive business tools for collecting feedback, strategizing, and brainstorming.
• Open Text Everywhere - As the enterprise moves away from a fixed and location-centric work setting to a dispersed mobile world; the ability to interconnect people, the processes and the core content regardless of where and when becomes a necessity and a competitive differentiator.

For more details on these applications you can watch a short video from Kevin's Video Comments - Kevin on mobile collaboration and knowledge management applications.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***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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