I recently talking with friend Jeff, and we started going down an interesting tangent. We started talking about all of the mobility that SAP is driving to. Between Fiori, Personas, UI5 etc, SAP is really trying to give it’s tired old look a face lift. Far be it from to argue that SAP is ugly. Then the recent news of the SAP/Apple partnership made me ask the question the whole concept. I realize that we are living in a mobile world, and everything does things from their phones. But how much of your enterprise business can really be done a mobile device?
Now, there is the obvious things like field service, mobile sales teams, and perhaps in some industries there is even a smart enough customer base to give your customers the possibility to create their own sales orders or service requests. But for things like production, finance, HR, purchasing etc, how much work would ever be done mobile??? I would love to hear some feedback on this. How mobile is a company willing to be? and how much are they willing to invest in it? I just personally see it in such a restricted place that you would ever need a mobile app on your iPhone to interact with SAP.
Now, I’m all about the cloud, and for my personal world of service, I’m all about mobility. But in my humble opinion, why you would need anything more than a web application (FIORI) for most businesses in most areas. And when you do, just make it a Hybrid application. Then you get the best of both worlds without redesigning the wheel. It’s true, if you do some native, you can make it look however you want. And if the app is customer facing, I totally understand. But how many things will be customer facing? and how many of your customers will be downing a new mobile app to do business with you? I personally find myself clearing out a lot of apps a week or two after I install them. I realize it’s much easier to go on a browser with a real keyboard. It’s novel, but for me, not practical.
What do you think? I’m just out of touch on how important mobile is? or this just a buzz word that SAP is trying too hard to capitalize on?
Thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike