Wall Street Analyst and SAP Enterprise Mobility

Happy Holidays
from Kevin Benedict!

I received an interesting call yesterday from a Wall Street analyst.  He wanted my opinion on SAP's acquisition of Sybase.  His premise was that there was not $5.8 billion worth of value in Sybase.  I responded that I had no expertise in valuation so could not help him in that determination.  However, I did have more than enough opinions on enterprise mobility to share.

I provided him the following list for his consideration during his valuation exercise:

1)  Had he looked into the potential value of Sybase's 365?  I said much of the world, and the fastest growing segments of the mobile market (LDC - less developed countries), are increasingly using SMS for mobile banking, money transfers, mobile payments, and many enterprise applications like field services, inventory, database queries, sales reports, etc.  He had not considered this.

Changing Attitudes of Mobile Shoppers

Mobile Shopping

Cameron Franks, area vice president of sales for the Americas at Sybase 365, an SAP Company, recently spoke about a survey they conducted with 1,000 consumers on mobile holiday shopping.  The key finding of the survey was that 32 percent of consumers, if offered mobile-based deals, coupons or alerts, could be persuaded to make a purchase on their mobile device. 

Another recent survey by mobile marketing agency Briabe Media and mobile-social networking company MocoSpace, they found that 30 percent of survey respondents said they expected to use mobile coupons during this holiday season.  Also in the survey, 62 percent said they planned to use mobile phones as a shopping tool prior to entering a store; and 46 percent stated they would use their phones for store or product research.

Tablets, Mobile Applications and the Enterprise

I have been reading several articles lately that talk about how popular tablets are predicted to become in the enterprise market.  Here is an excerpt from one article that I read this morning:

More than one in five Americans will own a tablet by 2014, and 37 percent of them will own them for business use, according to a recent survey.

Current business use of tablets:

• Business correspondence (58%)
• Online meetings/Web conferences (37%)
• Marketing (34%)
• Training (33%)
• Finance/accounting (32%)
• Sales (27%)
• Graphic design (27%)
• Inventory management (27%)
• Customer support (24%)

Another article stated, "Apple could sell 21 million units of its iPad tablet next year as half of the largest and most prominent companies in the world begin testing or deploying the iPad for corporate use, according to an analyst with Wall Street firm Piper Jaffray."


Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – December 23, 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 data and trends.

Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

Expectations for the tablet market in 2011 are positive, but to put things in context tablets will still be niche devices, maybe 15 percent of smartphone sales. We’ll see more supply than demand in 2011, and probably some vicious price competition because Apple will remain the leader in style, features and shipments.

http://blogs.gartner.com/nick_jones/2010/12/16/too-many-tablets-too-few-buyers/

eBay Mobile Commerce - Real Time Data from Six Global Markets

Ben Lee over at Smartsoft Mobile Solutions recently directed me to the eBay Mobile Commerce site.  On this site you can see mobile purchasing data from six global markets in near real time.  Very interesting!  I watched for some time the interesting data coming across their digital ticker tape along the bottom of their chart.  Here is some of the data about eBay purchases via mobile devices:

• Australians bought the most sporting goods via mobile devices in December 2010.
• Auto parts were the top selling products via mobile devices on Cyber Monday in Germany.
• The iPhone was the leading mobile platform for mobile sales on December 12, 2010.
• Toys made up 8.6 percent of mobile sales in France on December 10-11, 2010.
• December 12 was the busiest mobile shopping day so far in 2010.
• In the USA auto parts made up 8.3 percent of mobile purchases in 2010.
• In the USA cell phones and accessories made up 6.5 percent of mobile purchases in 2010.
• In the USA vehicle sales made up 16.5 percent of mobile purchases in 2010.

QR Codes and Mobile Retailing Applications

Home Depot iPhone App

I was sitting in my office chair today reading mail.  I received a magazine that had a QR code prominently displayed on a page.  I grabbed my iPhone 4, opened my Red Laser application and snapped a photo of the QR code.  A message instantly popped up asking if I approved - I said yes.  Immediately, my browser launched and a person was talking to me about their product.  I LOVED IT!

Think of the way companies can change their marketing and sales approach by having their very best sales and marketing spokesperson deliver key product messages to anyone with a smartphone and internet connection anywhere in the world.  No longer do you have to ask the sixteen year old sales assistant complex questions.  You can simply open a mobile application that supports QR codes, click on a sign or advertisement and learn about the product from an expert.

Which Mobile Application Company Will SAP Acquire Next?

I was speaking with an SAP executive last month about SAP's partner strategy for enterprise mobility.  The executive said that SAP ecosystem mobility partners would be well served to focus on building vertical industry specific business processes into their mobile applications, as SAP would be focusing more on horizontal business processes.  The executive went on to say that SAP would seek to partner first for vertical expertise and then consider acquiring select companies that showed success and penetration in key SAP markets.

This conversation got me thinking.  Which vertical industries would be the likely targets of mobile applications that SAP might want to acquire?  Could it be one of the following?

• Oil and Gas
• Utilities
• Retail (Location-Based Services, Coupons, Mobile Marketing)
• Plant Maintenance
• Chemicals
• Mining
• Transportation
• Facilities Management
• Enterprise asset management

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – December 23, 2010

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

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This holiday season consumers are beginning to shop and make purchases on their mobile phones. The shift from buying presents in front of the computer at home or work to doing it during bus commutes or while standing in line at cafes is small but noticeable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/technology/18mobile.html?src=busln

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PayPal has announced a whopping increase in mobile payments this festive season. In the month to December 15 the online payment processing company registered a 300 percent rise, compared to the same period last year.

http://www.bizreport.com/2010/12/more-mobile-users-shopping-via-phone.html

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A new ABI Research report calls the short term growth of mobile online shopping "nothing short of phenomenal." Purchases in the U.S. attributed to mobile online shopping, excluding travel, grew from $396.3 million in 2008 to $1.4 billion in 2009. ABI expects full year 2010 sales will more than double again, to more than $3.4 billion.

Leadership Change in SAP's Mobility Business Unit - Again

At Sapphire 2010 (May), Kevin Nix was in charge of SAP's mobile application development.  At TechEd 2010 (October), Bob Stutz was in charge of SAP's mobile applications development.  Today, (December 21, 2010), Raj Nathan is the interim EVP in charge of SAP's mobile application development. 



Is Kevin Benedict Next?



I want to volunteer myself for an interim VP role in the SAP Mobility Business Unit.  I can wear a tie again for a few months and speak the corporate line.  Really!  "On premise, on demand, on device and in memory... we want to help our customers better leverage their existing investments and make transformational changes that are game changing."  How is that?  There must be a list of names they are going down.  I have some time on my calendar before spring break.   

Here is the official word from SAP, "Bob Stutz has decided to leave SAP and we thank him for his longstanding leadership and contributions to the company. To ensure a smooth transition, John Chen, CEO and Chairman of Sybase, has appointed Raj Nathan, EVP and CMO of Sybase, to serve as interim head of the Mobile Applications Group.”

After the holidays give me a call.  Does the job come with an iPad?

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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 Applications and Device Governance

My friend Puneet Suppal who works in in the Premier Customer Network at SAP, published an interesting article on SAP's Community Network last week, entitled Enterprise Mobility:  What did we learn this year?  In this article Puneet highlights the fact that with the increasing popularity of enterprise mobility there will be "... a lot of data moving dynamically between a lot of systems and devices."  This data is often confidential and important, data that companies do not want to fall into the hands of competitors.

Puneet says companies must step back and develop an enterprise mobility strategy, and one of the most important parts of that strategy is, "the governance model; a model that takes into account the organization’s sensibilities and addresses the management of these remote devices and what sits on them – and the related security aspects."