Can You Handle the Truth about Enterprise Mobility and Big Data?

Enterprise mobility is not just about extending your office cubicle to the nearby Starbucks.  Nor is it just doing your same job, in the same manner from a remote location.  It is about doing a job in a different and better way.  A way that permits you to be at the point of action, the point of need, and the point where you can have the biggest positive impact on your bottom line without breaking your lines of communication or denying you access to critical information and team members.

Enterprise mobility is a way of keeping you connected to your business systems, aggregating mission critical information and business intelligence from dozens of different back end systems (think SAP ERP), using real-time big data analysis (think SAP Hana), and bringing all of this information together, in mobile applications - purpose built for the mobile user.  The Aberdeen Group refers to this as role-based custom mobile websites for users.

It is about providing real-time business analytics to decision makers, so they can make the best data-driven decisions, no matter their physical location.  By data-driven decisions, I mean decisions that are based on the analysis of large volumes of data that is related to your issue or subject.  How do you measure the value of "good" decisions?  I reported in a previous article that Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, from MIT's Sloan School of Management had discovered that "Data-driven decision making achieved productivity gains that were 5 to 6 percent higher than other factors could explain."  Those are significant gains for multi-billion dollar organizations.


Today I am in Las Vegas where I am attending SAPinsider's Mobile2012 conference, writing this article, responding to email messages, conducting business meetings, discussing writing a new book on enterprise mobility and preparing to lead three sessions on enterprise mobility.  Mobility enables me to be at the point of action where I can meet people and teach sessions without imposing friction on my analyst and consulting business.  What do I mean by friction?  Friction is when your business is slowed down and delayed because you are not accessible or information is not accessible while traveling.  Mobility allows you to "have your cake and eat it to."

In the Enterprise Mobility 2011 survey that I conducted and reported on in October of 2011, only 40% of respondents reported having a strategic enterprise mobility plan, although 80% reported that enterprise mobility was "very important" to "critical" for their companies future success.  This tells me that both the business and the IT organizations need to get together and really understand the possibilities that are available with enterprise mobility and document a strategy.  It doesn't seem like many organizations truly understand it yet.

The truth is that enterprise mobility offers many productivity improvements and efficiency gains, but the real values are in things like removing frictions, enabling better real-time data-driven decision making, having situational awareness, and freeing your people to spend more time at the point of action. 
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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

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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.

Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 27, 2012

The Field Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

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The University College London is preforming data collection using an icon-based interface that could intuitively be used by pigmy tribes in Africa affected by logging and poaching in their forest home. The hand-held device can be used to geotag trees, and then fed back to logging companies and policyholders to try and save crucial areas of forest. Read Original Content

Odawa Casino Resort upgraded its GIMS Uniform System inventory software with UHF-RFID technology to automate the inventory tracking and control of thousands of uniforms worn by team members at the property. Read Original Content

The global market for mobile location technologies reached $22.5 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $36.3 billion in 2016, increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 7.6 percent between 2011 and 2016. Read Original Content

Since 1995, Syclo has enabled hundreds of companies in 37 countries and industries supercharge their businesses with mobility.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Syclo. http://www.syclo.com/.

Intermec, Inc. announced the SG20 family of handheld scanners featuring fast 2D imaging technology for omnidirectional scanning. Designed to speed up the bar code scanning process in retail, healthcare and general countertop scanning applications, the SG20 scanner minimizes the time and effort required to read a bar code by providing more than 50 times the motion tolerance of competitive scanners. Read Original Content

XtremeSignPost, Inc. launched their consumer-based advertising system that encompasses a mobile, interactive, art and music sharing network.  In this process, RFID-enabled cell phones such as Samsung's Galaxy Nexus S running on Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich are used to recall and share transmedia art experiences from personalized RFID-tagged items. Read Original Content

Moneyball, Big Data, The Internet of Things and Enterprise Mobility

"In business, economics and other fields decisions will increasingly be based on data and analysis rather than on experience and intuition...we can start being a lot more scientific," predicts Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, from MIT's Sloan School of Management in a New York Times article The Age of Big Data, February 12, 2012.  This is the "Moneyball" approach to business.  Use the data, massive volumes of data, to find the truth, rather than lean on intuition.  In the past this was possible, but the long time frames required to find answers made it impractical for real-time decision making.

Just like in the movie Moneyball, large volumes of data hide truths that are not easily apparent without in-depth analysis.  These truths can lead us to competitive advantages, increased productivity, efficiencies and completely new and different ways of conducting business.  "Data-driven decision making" achieved productivity gains that were 5 to 6 percent higher than other factors could explain reported Brynjolfsson.  Pushing real-time data-driven decision making out to the mobile workforce is a subject that I find very intriguing.

Analyzing huge volumes of data instantly, in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, has enormous potential for those that work in the field.  In an age when mobile workers are wirelessly reporting and sharing data, and thousands of "things" are constantly reporting wireless sensor data that measure vibrations, locations, movements, temperatures, humidity and chemical changes in the air from industrial equipment, shipping crates, vehicles, electrical meters and many other things, it is critical to have real-time assistance from systems that can analyze vast amounts of data instantly.

SAP's Hana is a tool that promises to make this possible.  Here is how SAP promotes Hana, "Analyze massive amounts of data up to 3,600 times faster for instant business insights and transform your organization into a real-time business."  


I remember reading a post-accident report from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.  In the report it said that oil rig supervisors experienced a paralysis in decision making due to the overwhelming amount of seriously dire sensor data coming in.  The raw sensor data was not in a form that provided guidance and direction based upon a real-time analysis of data.  We humans can easily be overwhelmed during a crisis where emotions and adrenalin are peaked and this does not lead to good scientific reasoning.


CEOs and CIOs would be well served to ponder how real-time access to real-time business intelligence could impact global field, fleet and plant operations.  I remember talking to a fleet manager who said he once notified all of his vehicle drivers to fill up with fuel before end of day, because real-time market data suggested a hike in fuel prices would occur before morning.  They reported that they saved millions of dollars by taking this one step.  It was only possible because of real-time analysis and real-time mobile communications.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility 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.

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of February 26, 2011

Welcome to Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility in Asia.  Asia is predicted to be the fastest area of growth for enterprise mobility between now and 2016.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

M2M industry executive Derick Tsang will bring his knowledge of M2M and telecommunications to the Asia Pacific region for Telit Wireless Solutions.  The company has created a new “president of the Asia Pacific region” position for Tsang, and he will be responsible for South Korea, China, India, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Australia.  He will also establish Telit sales outreach in Japan. Read Original Content

Chinese search engine provider Baidu will take advantage of the booming mobile and smartphone market in China and focus on mobile in 2012.  In Q4 2011 China became the largest mobile market in the world. Read Original Content

Apple sales of the iPhone in China are soaring, as are sales of Mac computers.  In 2011, $13 billion in sales for Apple were in China, and sales of Macs increased 100 percent.  Apple is adding support for a number of services in its pursuit of the Chinese market, including search engine provider Baidu and sharing services. Read Original Content

Hong Kong now hosts Asia’s first social media research center with the launch of the new Social Media Laboratory with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.  Professor Tony F. Chan states “With this laboratory, our faculty and researchers are taking an active part in nurturing research and development talents in the blooming new arena of social media, and building Hong Kong as a leading hub of creative media and IT technologies in the region.” Read Original Content

The iPad trademark battle rages on, and tops the tech news in China this week.  Also, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has announced plans to regulate Internet television, including mobile video services, in the country.  Check out China’s five top tech news stories. Read Original Content

M2M News Weekly – Week of February 20, 2012

Welcome to M2M News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices.  I aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article.  I also search for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around the M2M market.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Social media has seized on the potential of RFID tags to log visitors to certain amusement parks. Once they pass through the gate or pass by an RFID scanner, their presence will be beamed to Facebook or another social media site announcing they were there and what they were doing. Read Original Content

According to ABI Research the compound annual growth rate of global insurance telematics subscribers will grow by 90 percent from 2010 to 2017. That's an increase from 1.85 million telematics users to a whopping figure of 89 million. Read Original Content

ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by ClickSoftware - http://www.clicksoftware.com/.

Texas Instruments has released a single-chip passive infrared micro-electro-mechanical system temperature sensor, called the TMP006. The TMP006 could open up new applications for devices that were previously unable to use IR temperature measurement because of size, power, or costs. That means going past industrial applications to include consumer electronics, such as smartphones, tablets, and notebooks. Read Original Content

The U.S. Army has placed its largest order of micro-robots with ReconRobotics, Inc. A contract worth $13.9 million will supply the U.S. Army with 1,100 Recon Scout XT micro-robot kits. The 1.2-pound robot is equipped with a camera that can perform indoor and outdoor surveillance for soldiers in combat. Read Original Content