Thanks to the wild popularity of smartphones such as iPhone and Blackberry, tablets such as iPad, and the apps that work with it, we have become the mobile generation, increasing using mobile devices for accessing the information we consume in our daily lives. Market research supports this shift – according to a recent report by Gartner, worldwide smartphone shipments in Q2, 2011 grew by 74% over the same quarter last year to 107 million units. To put this into perspective, worldwide PC shipments for Q2, 2011 grew by only 2.3% over the second quarter last year. In a recent blog Forrester said that while tablets will grow as quickly as MP3 players, smart mobile phones will sell in the hundreds of millions because they are truly “pocketable,” providing anywhere, anytime connectivity.
These smart mobile phones have become such a part of our daily lives that mobile computing is expected to seamlessly flow into our business lives as well and become an integral part of how we will work. According to a recent global report, Digital Megatrends 2015, by Oxford Economics, almost 60% of senior corporate executives expect mobile technology to provide the biggest boost to their businesses over the next five years. To support this trend, vendors are extending capabilities that are available in their traditional enterprise systems to mobile devices. However, mobile capability is not just about helping sales reps access the status of order using their smartphone while they are speaking with the customer or enabling a manager to approve purchase requisitions via their mobile device while they are on the road. It is also about providing the analytics they need on their mobile devices, so they can make better decisions, while they are in front of customer or in a meeting with a supplier.
SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI offers the capability to deliver content over any wireless device – iPad, RIM Playbook and devices based on the Android operating system. Users can drill down on and interact with familiar reports and metrics, change underlying data, trigger remote actions, and take immediate action. Users can be notified when a new report has been scheduled or modified. Plus, they can define what types of alerts they want to receive right through their mobile devices. The capability is not just limited to reports and dashboards – there is a mobile app for SAP Explorer as well. An intuitive design promotes usage, helping users get the information they need quickly, while fully leveraging the underlying SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI platform for security and other services. Deployment is quick, easy, and secure, requiring no additional servers. The combination of these pre-built apps running on SME BI platform – SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI makes mobile analytics very affordable for mid-sized companies.
Such capabilities allow SME organizations to immediately access information from many mobile devices at an affordable price. Management and information workers can stay up-to-date and make decisions using the latest information. Sales and field service staff can provide the right customer, product, and work-order information where and when it’s needed – helping to shorten sales cycles and increase customer satisfaction.
