Throwing Your Food Away and Mobile Applications

In Jonathan Bloom's new book American Wasteland he reports that the US produces about 591 billion pounds of food each year of which about 50 percent goes to waste somewhere along the food supply chain.  This includes unused restaurant food, food in the field and vegetables and fruits in the grocery store as examples.  Grocery stores throw away an estimated 30 million pounds of food each day.

The New York Times, Starbucks and Other Retail Locations that Need Mobile Applications

I was in Starbucks with my family this evening.  The only thing unusual about this was that it was the evening.  As I stood in line waiting to order I noticed nine New York Times that remained in the rack.  No one is going to buy a Sunday edition on Monday, so these were retail products that were also perishable.  This reminded me of a project that I was involved in a few years ago with a newspaper company.

The Transformational Power of Mobile Enterprise Applications, Part 2

This is Part 2 in this series.

Last week I read an announcement from SAP mobility partner ClickSoftware, the company that developed the SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution, concerning their new Facebook integration.  Here is an excerpt, "ClickSoftware announces tight integration between Facebook and its ClickContact self-service customer portal - helping service businesses deliver a high-value customer relationship online . . . customers can book and change service appointments directly on a service organization's Facebook page, receive reminders and notifications on the expected arrival time of the service engineer to minimize wait times - and reduce the chance that the service engineer will not find the customer at home."  You can read the full press release here.  ClickSoftware's solutions also come with mobile enterprise applications that are integrated with them.

The Transformational Power of Mobile Enterprise Applications, Part 1

In P.W. Singer's New York Bestseller, Wired for War, he writes, "World War I proved to be an odd, tragic mix of outmoded generalship combined with deadly new technologies."  The generals were simply not able to comprehend how new technologies were fundamentally changing warfare and the ways battles would be fought and won.  They continued to cling to the traditional methods and models passed down over generations.  I know there are challenges today with executives and managers struggling to understand how to use new mobile technologies and social networking in their organizations.

Link to Recorded SAP Enterprise Mobility Webinar

http://www.sap.com/community/events/2010_10_12_EMW/index.epx

This is the link to the recorded SAP Enterprise Mobility webinar that was conducted about a week ago. 

Here are the promoted contents:
  • The now and future of enterprise mobility.
  • Trends - How did we get here?
  • What are some strategy and organizational considerations to ensure success?
  • What is the role of a robust mobility platform?
  • Implementation challenges with enterprise mobility and best practices.
  • How will the new SAP/Sybase mobility product roadmap help you to implement your enterprise mobility strategy?

Who is Paying for Mobile Applications Today?

I had the opportunity this week to spend time with the IT management team of a large consumer products company.  I learned a great deal about how large companies approach new and potentially disruptive technologies like enterprise mobility. 

I was intrigued that, at times, outdated reseller channels can prevent large manufacturers from making good strategic IT decisions.  As we all know, mobility and the mobile web can give customers information directly from manufacturers.  There is no barrier to this important information.  The customers may also want to purchase more product from the manufacturer.  This can cause immediate channel conflict. 

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - October 14, 2010

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting information that reflects market numbers and trends.

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In a move that highlights the importance of customer relationship management on the go, SAP 's Sybase has introduced an application that makes the BlackBerry a mobile CRM tool.

http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0200028EF1B4

Mobile Retailing and Location Aware Applications

The location based services market is forecast to reach $21 billion by 2015.  Location aware mobile applications can provide the potential for many businesses to reach mobile users at the right time and in the right place.  What does this mean?  It is 11:45 a.m. and you are thinking about lunch.  If an email or text message arrives to your smartphone with a coupon for your favorite sandwich at the restaurant just a block from your office, there is a very good chance that you will eat there.

Aware and Intelligent Mobile Applications

I am very interested in mobile enterprise applications becoming smarter and more aware.  Mobile applications should begin to understand our needs and start doing more things for us automatically.  Every new feature in a mobile application should NOT mean there are more steps for us to do.

Microsoft has just kicked off a $400 million market campaign for Windows Phone 7.  I read this week that the theme of the marketing effort will be to emphasize that smartphones should be simpler.  They should provide us easy access to the things we use the phone for the most.  I agree.  One of the examples I read about was having the digital camera function available via a button without requiring unlocking the phone, finding the camera application and launching it.  Just let me take a quick picture.

Here are several ways mobile applications can become smarter.  Make them:

  • Geospatially aware
  • Business aware
  • Environmentally aware
  • Contextually aware

Geospatially aware:  If I am arriving at a customer's location, the smartphone should recognize my GPS location and automatically query my CRM and provide me with the latest information about my customers' orders, customer service issues, payment schedules, order deliveries, etc.  Don't make me ask for all of this information individually.  Just send it to me so I am prepared.

Business aware:  The mobile application should know my role and responsibilities in the company.  Based on my job function it should automatically provide me with relevant information that I need in order to do my job.  It should check to see if there are any open customer service issues, when a customer meeting is on my calendar. 

Environmentally aware:  Here are some examples weather, health, family schedule, travel plans, sitting, standing, exercising, heart rate, sugar level, body temperature, time of day.  For the most part, these are simply data points.  This data can be used to suggest and recommend things.

Context aware:  Is it the middle of a work day, or are you at your daughter's soccer game on the weekend, or traveling in Europe? Is it in the middle of the night?  Are you in an important meeting with a customer, or celebrating an anniversary with a candlelight dinner.  These all represent different contexts in which information may be desired or not.  If it is about time for lunch, look for good lunch options within walking distance of your location.  Search for lunch deals.  Consider my preferences when searching.  Mobile applications need to start recognizing the different contexts in our lives and make adjustments based upon these understandings.

All of this information, with an increasing number of sensors on or in your smartphone, person and environment, integrated with business analytic applications and improved calendars should be developed to help us.  You don't want annoying routine business calls when you are asleep in the middle of the night on a European vacation.  Your smartphone should understand the context and make adjustments by automatically sending calls to voice mail.

I noted the other day that ClickSoftware is integrating an increasing number of these "aware" features into the SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution for the service sector.  For example, notifying customers that the service technician is arriving within a certain period of time based upon their GPS location and traffic conditions.
 
Come see me at TechEd Las Vegas and let's brainstorm!

Here is a video comment that I recorded last week and posted to the SAP Mentor channel on this subject.

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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.
  

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Energy4U's Florian Ganz, Part 2

This is Part 2 of this intervew with Energy4U's Florian Ganz.  You can read Part 1 here.

Kevin: Can you tell us about some of your recent SAP enterprise mobility projects?

Florian: Certainly.

Power Plant Maintenance Project:

We are working with one of the big utility companies in Germany. The project involves the power plant maintenance processes. The company is an existing SAP user and we are replacing their 1st generation mobility solution that has poor performance and was not able to carry all required offline data.

The customer uses the SAP Plant Maintenance module. Energy4U is implementing Syclo's mobile solution and integrating it with SAP Plant Maintenance. The customer will use both laptops and rugged handheld computers (Psion Teklogix rugged devices including RFID). They will start with 20 mobile users and expand to 100.

The key to winning this project was the ability to deliver a proof of concept within only two weeks.

Utility Project in Italy:

This project was sold by SAP's sales force and involved the solution SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization from ClickSoftware.

This SAP user wanted to centralize the dispatch of hundreds of service technicians to increase efficiencies by optimizing routes and reducing travel times and expenses. The SAP sales team brought in ClickSoftware's solution and Energy4U, a Siemens business, to do the implementation.

The project started in May and integration testing will start end of this month (October). The mobility component will quickly follow. The service technicians will use a combination of laptops mounted in their vehicles and PDAs.

Large Pharmaceutical Company:

This SAP customer had a first generation mobile solution that suffered from poor synchronization performance and overall SAP integration problems. They came to Energy4U for a mobile solution that would work with SAP Plant Maintenance and could handle over 100,000 equipments and functional locations (SAP objects) in the asset management database on the PDA in an offline and online mode.

The customer is using SAP Plant Maintenance and SAP Materials Management. They wanted a service technician dispatch system (they chose a solution developed by Energy4U) that worked with SAP. They needed a solution that could work both offline and online. The customer selected Motorola's ES400 ruggedized smartphone to use in the field.

Besides these three projects, we are working with various other customers to ensure that their mobility efforts are successful.

You need more information? Feel free to get in contact with Florian: SERVICES@energy4u.org.


***************************************************
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.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict