Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

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 NAME power on their resume.

Show IT managers how to extend their current SAP infrastructure and code to mobile applications. This will accomplish their purposes.
Show IT managers that your solution is from a Certified SAP Partner

The SAP system integrator does not support the mobile technology, so recommends some other mobile solution that they support and have trained experts on.

Go directly to the end user with your message and evangelize and educate them. Build support internally for the "best" mobile technology. Close the deal first, then motivate the system integrator to be trained on your mobile technology and play a role in the implementation.

The SAP sales team does not get quota credit on it, but they do on another mobile solution. If the sales person does not make their numbers they are fired, so they do not care which mobile technology is better if it does not help keep their job.

Find a way for your mobile technology to sell more SAP licenses and products. Perhaps the mobile workforce that is not currently using SAP licenses will need them if they are connected via mobile devices. This would encourage the SAP sales force to work with you to sell more SAP licenses. Think in terms of the SAP AE's interests as well as the customers.

SAP's Industry Principals and Solutions Managers also must be very selective as to the mobile technology they recommend. They would not want to recommend a product that was not on the SAP price list or Certified Partner list, unless there was no other viable choice or this product helped sell other SAP licenses that benefited the SAP sales team.

SAP has only identified a few mobile categories for partnerships; field service automation, route/delivery and mobile CRM. I can tell you from personal experience that hundreds of mobile applications are needed in most large enterprises. Mobile applications that deal with security, asset management, inspections, compliance, job estimating, fleet management, engineering, construction, logistics, etc. There are massive opportunities to mobilize these business processes.
Show the SAP user and the SAP sales team how you can help them.

SAP customers are often on 5 year plans. These plans include upgrades, roll-outs, add-ons, customization, old product sun setting, mergers and acquisitions, etc. What does this mean to the mobile entrepreneur? It means your product needs a 5 year road map that aligns with SAP and the SAP customer's. If it does not, you are unlikely to survive the first round.

Be the thought leader and explain where mobility is going to be in 5 years. Tell them why your solution is better aligned with the direction of mobility than any.

The biggest project and highest priority in the company is around route delivery improvement, and your project is mobile SAP CRM. The route delivery mobility vendor agrees to extend their mobile solution into mobile CRM and since it is a higher priority, you lose.

Understand the decision making process, organizational chart and budget limits within IT and the department you are targeting. Can you keep the project cost below the threshold that requires additional management approvals? Can you break down your project so that yearly costs keep it below the approval thresholds so you can simply focus on this one department until it is firmly established?

The CIO will never get invited to speak in front of thousands at Sapphire if they choose your solution. Your user conferences could be held at Denny's.

Become a Certified SAP partner and attend Sapphire yourself. Be a mobile solution provider in a different category than other larger mobility vendors. Be the mobile application provider for; food processors, engineers, bridge inspections, healthcare, quality assurance, sustainability, etc., and then expand your mobile offerings. That is exactly what all the other mobile partners of SAP are doing.

If you would like to discuss these strategies and/or my consulting practice please contact me.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert

http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/

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

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 significant problem. The challenge they often face is not understanding the business of their potential partners, resellers and target customers. Let me provide the following scenario to demonstrate my point:

There is a large conference room with a long table. There are 2 mobility entrepreneurs, 12 IT managers for a large SAP customer, 4 sales and pre-sales folks from SAP, and 3 representatives from a large system integrator with a focused SAP practice in attendance. The mobility entrepreneurs stand up and present the "world's best" enterprise mobility technology to the attendees. When they are done presenting, lots of questions are asked; the entrepreneurs cover them all and leave to catch their flight home expecting a PO on the fax machine when they arrive. The PO never arrives. Why?

Here are some possible reasons:

The SAP customer has a $14 million problem, and the mobile technology presented will solve only $675,000 of that problem. They need a complete solution, not a partial.

The $14 million problem requires a full range of systems integration, business process design and SAP customization to fix. They want to fix this problem with one overall integrated solution, not many small solutions linked together. Complexity can kill.

The SAP customer has three preferred SAP systems integrators – none have a practice around this particular mobile technology.

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?

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 NAME power on their resume.

The SAP system integrator does not support the mobile technology, so recommends some other mobile solution that they support and have trained experts on.

The SAP sales team does not get quota credit on it, but they do on another mobile solution. If the sales person does not make their numbers they are fired, so they do not care which mobile technology is better if it does not help keep their job.

SAP's Industry Principals and Solutions Managers also must be very selective as to the mobile technology they recommend. They would not want to recommend a product that was not on the SAP price list or Certified Partner list, unless there was no other viable choice or this product helped sell other SAP licenses that benefited the SAP sales team. Their priorities would be:
1. SAP solution
2. SAP price list solution (could be a partner's solution on the price list)
3. SAP Certified or Innovation Partner
4. Only in desperate times would a non-partner be recommended and then only if it helped sell more SAP products

SAP pre-sales teams learn about many different technologies, but if it does not help their Account Executive make his/her quarterly numbers, it is unlikely to be introduced to the customer. However, there is an exception; if the solution, combined with an SAP solution helps close more revenue for the SAP Account Executive, then you have a winner.

SAP customers are often on 5 year plans. These plans include upgrades, roll-outs, add-ons, customization, old product sun setting, mergers and acquisitions, etc. What does this mean to the mobile entrepreneur? It means your product needs a 5 year road map that aligns with SAP and the SAP customer's. If it does not, you are unlikely to survive the first round.

Large software companies like SAP often consider potential partners as possible acquisition targets. Issues like are you private or public, customer base size, intellectual property ownership, market presence, etc, play into these considerations. If two partners have similar technologies, the one that is a better future acquisition target may be chosen for strategic reasons.
The SAP customer may have outsourced their IT to a large service provider with their own recommended mobile solution.
The SAP customer may have a large server deal with IBM, and IBM agrees to throw in a software solution for free if the annual support contracts are renewed...it happened to me :-(
The biggest project and highest priority in the company is around route delivery improvement, and your project is mobile SAP CRM. The route delivery mobility vendor agrees to extend their mobile solution into mobile CRM and since it is a higher priority, you lose.
The CIO will never get invited to speak in front of thousands at Sapphire if they choose your solution.
Your user conferences could be held at Denny's.

In summary, a mobile solution needs to be viewed favorably by the SAP customer, SAP sales team and the SAP system integrator. Not always all of them, but most of them. It needs to align with most of their strategic visions, personal interests and compensation structures. The frustrating part of this list for many mobility entrepreneurs is that none of it has to do with "best" mobile technology. These are primarily business issues that relate to alliances, partnerships, self-interests, marketing, strategic directions and business models.

Since we live in the real world, not all of the players' motivations will be clear or have the same level of priority. Sometimes new technologies appear that do not fit these molds, but once you understand these underlying motivations it becomes more clear.

If you are interested in discussing these issues in more detail and/or learning more about my consulting practice please contact me.

Watch for Part 5 in this series - it gives hope back to the Mobile Start-Ups. You can follow-me on Twitter (see right sidebar) and by RSS.

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Author Kevin Benedict

Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert

http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/

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

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Mobile SAP CRM

In a recent analysis from Frost & Sullivan called, European Mobile Sales Force Automation (CRM/SFA) Markets, it is stated that mobile SFA is the largest application segment after wireless email, and this segment will grow close to 300% between now and 2013.

SAP seems to be making a big push in this area with mobile CRM partnerships with Sky Technologies (Certified SAP Partner, Certified SAP NetWeaver Partner) Sybase and RIM (Innovation Partners) in this area. What are the key areas covered by mobile CRM?

Activity management – Phone call, email, cold calls, what to do each day
Lead management – receive leads, contact, qualify
Opportunity Management – define, document and manage specific sales opportunities
Account Management – organizational charts, people, budgets, plans, needs

To me these are obvious needs for the mobile sales force. They work and travel in mobile environments so provide mobile tools that let them sell more product and make customers happier.

The future of mobile SAP CRM in my opinion is the combination of mobile SAP CRM and business intelligence. The ability to fully brief a traveling sales person on a customer’s account status, order history, shipments, credit status, financials, latest news and potential opportunities using text and audio files is very useful. Audio because many times a sales person is flying or driving and would benefit from having this information in audio format so they could listen to it.

In addition to the obvious account information, what additional kinds of mobile information do you think would be useful to integrate within a mobile SAP CRM?

For related articles please read:

The Future of Mobile and Route Sales Applications for Smart Phones, Part 1
The Future of Mobile and Route Sales Applications for Smart Phones, Part 2

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert

http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert and as such I work with, and have worked with, many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Body Weight, Twitter, M2M and Mobile Applications

In the past I have written articles about M2M and mobile applications. These have been in the context of machines sending wireless data to other machines. I believe the value of these applications have not been fully realized, and am excited about seeing more of them. If readers of this blog have interesting M2M solutions please share them with me.

My wife sent me an article on one of the most interesting (read disturbing) examples of M2M. Seems there is a home scale, for $159, that is wirelessly enabled and sends Twitter messages with your weight to anyone following you. Let me ask by a show of hands how many of you want to see my daily weight tweeted to you? All of you with hands up will be deleted.

I have seen and heard numerous examples of great M2M use cases. An article I wrote yesterday discussed street parking sensors that automatically send messages to a mobile service that notifies subscribers of available parking spots. I have seen electrical utility companies install wireless monitors at remote substations. I have heard of mobile wireless sensors in green houses and chicken houses that monitor, report and adjust temperatures.

The ability to automatically collect data, wirelessly transmit the data and accept electronic instructions from a distant mobile supervisor is a very interesting concept. The military is using more and more of these sensors in their Network-Centric Warfare strategies. I wrote about this strategy in terms of field force automation in this article.

Please send me interesting use cases for M2M and I will the best examples here.

If any of you are tempted to automatically send me messages concerning your body weight, or other information of a VERY personal nature, please resist.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert

http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert and as such I work with, and have worked with, many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Street Parking and Mobile Data Solutions

I had several very interesting calls yesterday with various mobile industry dignitaries. We shared ideas, concepts and experiences around mobility. One of the mobile use cases that really stands out to me is the use of wireless parking sensors used in 25,000 on-street parking spots in San Francisco.

It seems the parking sensors can detect the presence of a vehicle. When no vehicle is in the parking spot, it can transmit an "availability" message to a central server that broadcasts the location to mobile devices of drivers. Drivers can simply open the application and view the location of all available on-street parking locations.

This use case for a mobile application is AWESOME! I applaud the imagination and creativity of the entrepreneurial team that put that together. A common pain point, that bright minds have addressed. I am inspired.

Another person I spoke to yesterday was in Kenya, Africa working at a large cement manufacturing plant. They have been implementing many new SAP processes to better track inbound materials from suppliers, and are now preparing to implement various delivery and scheduling applications using SAP partner Sky Technologies' SkyMobile application to extend business processes out to the mobile workforce.

This cement company estimates they have already saved over $1 million in materials tracking improvements, and now expect to add to their ROI by mobilizing more SAP business processes.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert

http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

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