Why SAP Mobile?

Well, everything now has gone mobile. Mobile devices are getting smaller: personal digital assistant such can now fit into our palm, cellular phones are more than just phones, and laptops are getting smaller, thinner and lighter.

This mobilization of things has greatly impacted today's business in a lot of beneficial ways. Businessmen, CEO and staff have become productive due not only a lot of processes being automated but because they can do their work wherever they go.

Of course, it is not wonder why SAP, the world's leader in enterprise solutions, has developed mobile support for business applications. MySAP technology has made spatial and temporal situations borderless with people working together under SAP's technical mobile infrastructure.

Here is a scenario. People in the sales team may be scattered in different geographical locations around the world. Yes, this has a common scenario since the last few decades. But these people can work together as if they are just within a few cubicles away. They can co-locate with clients by accessing sales databases. They can communicate in real time with their colleagues miles away. They can even work in their underwear at home. Or while sipping their favorite soda and lying on the beach, they can fire up their applications as a virtual office.

Sap's mobile technology is integrated in one Mobile Computing or Pervasive Computing suite called mySAP Mobile Business. This technology can facilitate mobile workers by integrating enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications with mobile gadgets connectivity to give them real time computing with high quality and up to date information.

Being on the move and still having great control over business operations have both great and powerful advantages. For people like me who love to meet people for coffee and socialization and yet still greatly considers other mental aspects of business intricacies, using mySAP Mobile business is like getting the best of all worlds. While sitting on an piazza and talking to a client or potential clients in friends and relative, I cam manage office transactions with a few clicks of the mouse and taps on my laptop keyboard. I can also update my customers and get quick responses from them through emails or online chat. I can easily monitor my sales and other transactions from around different places by simply firing up my favorite web browser.

The mySAP Mobile Business suite is both and online and offline mobile platform. It can seamlessly integrate back end and front end interfaces to ensure that important developments in business is communicated to the right people at the right time. From the offline solutions, mySAP Mobile Business can deploy data using the SAP mobile engine. This can give employees more flexibility in that they can use their smart phones, PDAs, handhelds and other mobile devices to do business even though they are in remote places with no network connection.

Tomorrow, let us take a closer look at the SAP mobile engine in particular and the mySAP Mobile Business suite in general. And for you reading this, wherever you are now, I hope you are also in a dynamic monitoring of your business. Take care.

Enhancing SAP ERP 6.0

The competition for ERP applications has always been stiff among SAP, Oracle and Microsoft with many more coming in such as Salesforce which is currently in team up with the gain Google.
SAP, the world leader in ERP application, of course does not want to be outdone. To further push its products, SAP released a second enhancement product last month. This enhancement is targeted for large enterprise customers.

The enhancement package encompasses as lot of applications with the vast SAP Enterprise Resource Planning Suite. Upgrades include both horizontal and industry specific components as well as those for the core application and web services which are derived from SAP business solutions.

SAP intends to release these upgrades progressively about two upgrades every year. I think this is a good strategy so as not to overwhelm users with both expenses and learning about new upgrades. Also having to progressively release updates breaks up the massively expensive and time consuming cycle that may IT shops go through in order to have upgrades.
SAP announced its strategy in 2006 and its continuing effort to keep the ERP 6 platform stable until 2010. But for now, the problem that SAP will have to tackle is how customers will scamper to get the upgrades.

It is still hard to say how these upgrades will be accepted by customers. Although many of them say that the strategy of SAP for maintaining a stable core for several years at a time have a good effect, many customers are unsure whether they want to spend some more money or not. Those who have been implementing MySAP ERP 2004 will need to upgrade to ERP 6.0 so that they can get the switch framework functionality which is a required in order for the system to be able to utilize the enhancement packages.

SAP introduced MySAP 2004 two years ago, and SAP ERP 6.0 was introduced just last year in 2006. As of today, there are about 2,800 customers for SAP ERP 6.0. Compared to the approximately 33,000 customers that the company has on its roster, this is a tiny number. As for the MySAP ERP 2004 platform, there are about 6,000 customers.
According to Judith Hurwitz, an analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, "It's always better to have software that is more modular and easier to upgrade, absolutely. That said, these [SAP] implementations are really large. Customers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I remember talking to a customer who said that to do even a point release is six months of work, and that's just a point release. Upgrading an entire system, you have to check and recheck every area you've done customized work to. You have to test it all."

But for my part, if it was my company that gets confused whether or not to get upgrades, my first consideration would be if my company desperately needs. I am aware that companies need to evolve. If getting SAP ERP 6.0 is beneficial to the evolution and my company can afford it without sacrificing other aspects of the business process, I would acquire it.