Mobile Business Applications Next Advancement in Mobile Convergence Date:   Wednesday , November 03, 2010 Enterprise software has long been restricted to business users who are expected to perform the transactions or view information with limited user interface options — normally a laptop or a PC. In today’s context, the definition of business users has been extended to people who perform business functions, beyond the transactional users. The change has also happened with managers and senior managers who seek to access information on a self-service basis rather than be supplied information by others. The dynamic nature of business as well as the freedom to operate from different parts of the world and at odd times have also created a need for alternative methods of being connected to the enterprise software that is deployed in organizations. Approvals for transactions are expected anytime since, with many organizations, business is operating almost 24x7. Mobile business applications are the next revolution of extending enterprise software to the business end user, who may carry a smart mobile handset like an iPad, mobile phone, or BlackBerry, and who is connected online to a network on a 24x7 basis. This is especially relevant to the Indian context, with the explosion in the number of mobile connections that have happened recently, and with the introduction of 3G technology. As of July 2010, India has more than 635 million mobile phone connections and is adding five to six million new connections every month. The recent statistics show that 15 percent of the connections are on smartphones, which translates to about 95 million connections. On a rough estimate, 50 percent of the smartphones are being used for business purposes. That indicates at least 40 to 50 million mobile phone connections that are potential users for running mobile business applications. BlackBerry alone has about 4,000,00 connections in India. Mobile phones have even penetrated rural areas. With the focus of many corporations being business at the bottom of the pyramid, there is wider scope for capturing business transactions happening in rural areas on smart mobile handsets. Thus, the next revolution would be to build and deploy mobile business transactions by enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors, in close collaboration with telecom companies. Telecom companies would use their network reach to be able to connect the ERP solutions with the centralized hosting capabilities they may possess for the mobile applications. This may present a new revenue stream for them. ERP vendors like SAP are already offering mobile development platform and standard customer relationship management(CRM) and ERP-centric transactions that help business users in sales and customer-facing functions to be able to perform transactions. Integration of mobile business applications back to enterprise software is a critical requirement, and SAP, for example, already offers the SAP NetWeaver Process Integrator offering to be able to orchestrate transactions. Some examples of business scenarios that would be increasingly offered as mobile business applications are: * Traditional workflow approvals in an organization: PO, expense reports, sales order, credit approvals, etc., * Field sales management * Field service management * Utilities: billing and collections * Remote supply chain/rural supply chain management * Microfinance segments: mobile SIM card-based banking, loan application process and approvals, etc. Mobile business applications can also originate outside the organization — from an end consumer — or from a user who is within the organization. As an example, for an end consumer-initiated transaction, imagine one could choose a pizza catalogue from his mobile and make an order to the pizza center nearest to his location. The telecom company can route the pizza order into the ordering system, which could be on an ERP application, that is hosted either in their own data centre or within the internal cloud of the pizza company. The ERP software running within the pizza company can then process the order, then SMS back to the end user who ordered the pizza the details of the order and also the exact time when the pizza can be delivered. There are many other examples of how mobile business applications can be relevant, even simply within an organization. A sales executive tracking his or her opportunities or a purchase manager being able to approve purchase orders while on the move are some other examples. While the situation described above is not quite new to the business world, the change that is now happening is the widespread use across industries and organizations. The growth of mobile connections and the introduction of 3G technology are fueling this growth, and businesses are also finding smarter ways of doing business and cutting down on cycle times. PDAs are getting converged into mobile phones, and the convergence of mobile business applications into mobile phones and iPads is now a possibility. ERP vendors like SAP are also increasingly offering standard scenarios and technology for their ecosystems to co-innovate, including the ability to orchestrate transactions between the mobile business application and the ERP application. The development of the mobile business applications would increasingly be built by the ecosystems that co-innovate with the ERP vendors. India, with its huge population of technically skilled workers, will see a larger developer community and organizations that are working in synergy toward building these applications for diversified business scenarios. With a view to drive efficiencies, SAP is co-innovating with Sybase to build pre-packaged scenarios around sales and services functions within CRM software and enterprise mobility, in order to offer complimentary technology solutions. This will enable SAP to deliver capabilities for its customers and partners to build mobile business applications according to their enterprise needs. SAP also offers business intelligence capabilities through its SAP BusinessObjects Mobile software, with which business users can view BI reports on their BlackBerrys and other mobile devices. Thus, transactions that are being performed by business users will increasingly be carried out through mobile applications, which will greatly increase the efficiencies of corporations and cut down the cycle time of transactions. The author is Vice President-Solution Engineering, SAP Indian Sub-continent