I have been working with analyst Maribel Lopez of Lopez Research on a new mobility thought leadership topic as part of the Mobile Sense series. In the whitepaper that she has written (coming soon), Maribel tells us that businesses need to look to combine mobile data with big data processing and analytics to store, analyze and convert numerous data sources into context that is related to the customer, the market or a situation. Hence, the 6 weeks it took to reply to a customer need or a business opportunity should happen in a much more acceptable timeline with inputs from various data sources. Imagine how you can harness the valuable data you already collect to deliver an experience – in whatever amount of time is the right time for your business.

Let’s touch of the meat of the topic. According to Maribel, companies will transform business processes by using contextual data from various sources, including internal corporate apps, Web-accessible data, and connected device data (i.e. The Internet of Things) to build what Lopez Research calls Right Time Experiences (RTE). She defines RTEs as “enhanced business processes or services that deliver an employee or customer the proper information at the moment of need”.

Right now, SAP and Lopez Research are working on a whitepaper and a series of events (including a seminar in Palo Alto September 5th) that will dive into much more detail, however, for now we’ll touch on some hilights to whet your appetite. Right Time Experiences are:

• Adaptable. Today’s applications and services were built for mass consumption and designed to work on a specific device. RTEs will adapt as a person moves between devices such as a laptop to a smartphone to a tablet. While RTEs benefit from real-time data, they do not have to be a real-time experience but merely an experience that happens at the point of need. RTEs will analyze a person’s transaction history, analyze data from your current condition, and respond with data that is relevant to the individual user or to a specific occurrence.
• Semantic and predictive. An RTE learns and adjusts to a user’s behaviors over time. If the user’s context changes, the RTE should self-adapt. A predictive RTE prevents issues and/or presents opportunities to the user. For example, if an employee schedules a business trip abroad with the company’s travel agent, the company’s mobile management software could automatically check to see if the user has an international roaming plan. If the employee does not have the needed plan, the software could launch a purchase order for the plan and set a reminder to cancel it once the trip has ended.
• Connected across internal and external data sources. Most applications operate in information silos while RTEs are integrated across internal corporate data sources. RTEs also connect to data that resides outside of the company. RTEs will link applications to application programming interface (API) accessible data and services, such as reviews, product comparisons, transaction clearinghouses, authentication services and click-to-call services. Businesses are also providing API-accessible data to their partners and IT will use this data to create RTEs that optimize work-flow. For example, a beverage manufacturer could make its inventory data accessible to its bottle distributors dispatch systems with APIs.

My personal example above is a simple one. There was a vast amount of data available in both comapnies internal systems and other public data sources that gave each company the information they could have used to deliver an experience to me in the right time. I can only think of the hundreds of ways this can apply to other businesses for both their internal employees and customers.

The good news is that leading firms are already delivering RTEs today. However, the market is young and ripe for opportunity! This topic will be explored with Maribel Lopez on SAP Radio on Wednesday September 5th. On the same day, SAP is also hosting a Right Time Experiences workshop (moderated by Lopez) in Palo Alto, CA. Check out the events to learn how you can drive Right Time Experiences for your business.

Personal apps aside, there are also some work apps that, though incredibly simple, make a big difference. I’ll share a few…

I was at the SAP office in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago and had the great opportunity to sit down with our Global IT team responsible for building internal apps for SAP. The IT apps team has a mission to “serve employees by listening and understanding, and by improving processes, methods and tools.” During the discussion of new mobile apps the team has rolled out, it struck me that the small, simple apps that can be very significant.

There are two very basic things that I have struggled with in the past year – one is dialing in to a conference call and needing to memorize ten digits to enter in my iphone, and the second is interpreting the complex acronyms we like to use on a daily basis.

It is sad, but I simply do not have the capacity to memorize a ten digit passcode required to get into a conference call. I can easily remember my 16 digit credit card, my childhood best friend’s phone number, and every phone number I have ever had – but when it comes to retaining numbers for roughly 30 seconds, seven is my limit. I even downloaded the book ‘Walking with Einstein’ to try to learn how to improve my memory for just this purpose. While the book was great, I found an even better way to solve my problem. Easy Connect.

This is a very simple mobile app that makes a big difference to me. It is integrated into my calendar and automatically dials the conference call number and enters the code for me. Certainly not rocket science, but takes something that has always caused me grief (especially while driving) and does that little bit to make my life easier. It eliminates the need for me to pull off the road into some stranger’s parking lot just to dial a phone number. Thank you IT.

The next little app that makes a big difference is our internal ‘acronym decoder’. Anyone who works at (or with) SAP knows that we love acronyms. For example, our MEAP and MDM/EMM solutions can be leveraged by the MIC and the MDC to build apps leveraging BYOD and COPE for IT. Seriously. Painful. Our IT team has built an app that allows you to simply enter those three little letters and enjoy “a-ha” moments that help you actually follow conversations.

I have enjoyed reading great articles recently about ‘crapplications’ and ‘lacklications’ from some of my industry peers. These great articles talk about apps that either try to do too much or don’t do enough – and consquently don’t do anything very well. The thing that I value about my favourite apps built by IT are that they are what ‘Mobility for All’ is all about. A mobile strategy doesn’t have to mean building only complicated, data rich, in-depth, ROI generating apps. It is about making people more productive in every way possible.

I encourage you to explore quick wins that get people excited about mobile, and include them in your product development plans.

I decided to follow the news via Twitter and quickly got bombarded with over 1,400 tweets on the topic. The excitement from followers at the press conference in San Francisco, people following online, and even in the office was great. Some were surprised by the news, commenting “SAP goes big in mobility!” The EMF’s own Philippe Winthrop commented that “It’s obvious that SAP is in it to win it in enterprise mobility…”

Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates was quoted in TabTimes as saying “SAP is doubling down on mobile because it sees it’s a critical aspect of where business computing is headed. What they’re saying is “smartphone, tablet, whatever device, we don’t care, we’ll support it.”

The great news is that Syclo is no stranger to SAP. The companies have been partners since 2009. Syclo’s SMART family of enterprise mobile apps already integrate with SAP’s ERP and CRM products and are built on SAP’s Sybase Unwired Platform. Both SAP’s and Syclo’s apps can be integrated into a wide variety of enterprise solutions, staying true to SAP’s strategy to deliver mobile apps to both SAP and non-SAP systems.

SAP employees were quick to welcome Syclo to the family. Their domain expertise and industry-leading apps will significantly drive innovation in enterprise mobility.

To wrap up, I think Sanjay Poonen, SAP’s president of Global Solutions, put it best when quoted in the TabTimes article “We have the largest mobile sales force of any company and now we’re going to double down. We’re going to be aggressive with the speed of a cheetah and the power of an elephant.“

1. We are at the beginning of an incredible journey. The pace of change is this market is truly incredible and the adoption by enterprises is set to take off. In his session, Rick Bauer of CompTia stated that “The CIO and the organization face not only the consumerization of IT (CoIT), but also the increasing velocity of technology diffusion into the enterprise.” While we have to be sure not to get too caught up in every technology wave, we need to embrace the technology that users want, and don’t let it get away from us. This journey is one that no leading company can afford to miss.
2. Today’s technology is causing relationships to change. The connections that exist between IT and other lines of business including sales and marketing are morphing in a positive way. For example, one conference session featured both the CIO and CMO of a major insurance company, discussing how their departments work together in today’s CoIT-inspired environment. The CIO had a fantastic observation that “IT has to have enough insight to make a difference – and the relevance & credibility with the business to make a difference”. His observation as a CIO was that as he is approached for a technology request, “there are fewer times that a gap is a chasm when we are talking to LOBs about their technology needs.” Consumerization has driven users and lines of business to be better educated on what is possible and has made them more willing to work in concert with IT to meet their needs.
3. Apps are a significant priority. I’ve been talking about the importance of mobile applications in almost every blog I write, and the conference focus was right in line with this core belief. Just before the show opened I heard that Apple announced that the 25 billionth app was sold over the weekend. The economics of that are staggering! When was the last time anyone had sold 25 billion of anything? At the CITE conference, the apps discussion was around building great apps. I really enjoyed sessions by Brian Katz of Sanofi. His buzzword is that we need to avoid building “Crapplications.” Our focus should be on building apps that meet the needs of users and take a ‘bottoms up’ approach when defining use cases. To do this, go for a ride-along with your technicians, sit for a day with your users and observe how they interact with data before you decide what to build into the app. Design is key – but overdesigning and putting too many features into an app can be a major downfall.
4. Data is independent of devices. We’ve come a long way in the mobile world; if you look at the number of vendors who claim to manage some aspect of your mobile world (I’ve heard that today there are anywhere from 40-70 vendors) they will all tell you a slightly different story of how to do it. Soon, we will live in a world where information moves based on what device or system you are using. Consumerization has changed the model: BYOD (bring your own device) and COPE (corporate owned, personally enabled) combined represent what CoIT means. This forces us to rethink how we manage mobility. We can’t simply manage a mobile device; rather we have to think about management from a more holistic point of view – connectivity, security, application management and MDM are parts of a bigger, comprehensive EMM (enterprise mobility management) requirement.
5. Adoption is the new ROI. If you are trying to figure out how to quantifiably measure ROI in this new mobile world I think you’re going to have a pretty tough time. Can you quantify the value of mobile email? In fact, can you even remember a time when you didn’t have mobile email to compare to? Smartphones and tablets are significantly impacting how we do business – but exactly how significant is it? Forecasts are now stating there will be 100 million iPads sold by the end of this year. With numbers like that, perhaps we simply need to consider mobile as the new standard business tool and look at a new way to track success: adoption. If your employees and customers are engaging with you through mobile apps then perhaps you are already achieving the ROI you are looking for.
6. Think mobile first. Whether you are deploying apps to your internal employees, partners or customers, the crystal ball of the future predicts that taking a ‘Mobile First’ mentality would be a good strategy. I talked about how this concept in in use at SAP for both internal and external apps in this short video recorded at CITE. Mobile is a mindset that we are embracing wholeheartedly at SAP – it is driving how IT works internally and how we go to market with our product offerings. At CITE this topic came up several times as vendors and enterprises alike look to the future.

Overall, the CITE conference provided a broad perspective of the impact of mobile and social from industry CIOs who are embracing the technology. One of the best quotes I heard this week was in a session about what mobile consumer technologies can do for your business. Often we think about mobilizing existing business processes – but the potential new ways that this technology brings about are what is really compelling. One CIO advised “Don’t pave the cow path.” In other words, open your eyes to the potential that consumer technology can bring about to transform your business.

I thought that I would be completely disconnected from work for 7 days and 7 nights. It turns out that even in the middle of the ocean I couldn’t escape SAP mobility!

The whole family set sail from Florida on a Disney cruise. We had absolutely perfect weather (80 degrees and sunny every day) and we had a fantastic time at every port of call (except for when the Mexican bank machine ate my debit card – but that’s another story).

One of the highlights of our time at sea was dinner each evening. We had the pleasure of sharing our table with a family from Manchester, England each night. We got along very well, chatting every night well after everyone else had left the dining room. Our 4 year old daughters enjoyed hiding under the table, making faces and laughing hysterically. My daughter even started speaking with a British accent. But that is not what this story is about… This blog is titled “It’s a small world after all” for a good reason.

On day 6 of our 7 days at sea, our dinner conversation finally turned to work. Leah asked what my husband and I do for work and I indicated that we both work in IT. Interestingly enough, she was an IT Manager. Small world, right? Well, not quite. I explained that I work at SAP and focus on enterprise mobility. Now here’s where the small world part comes in. On the other side of the world, she is currently working on an IT project to implement SAP Mobile CRM and is evaluating Afaria to manage her company’s Android devices. Oddly enough, of all the products in the mobile market, I spent the last several years marketing these two products.

I find it interesting that 1500 miles from my home (and 4500 miles from her home) in the middle of the Atlantic ocean we were randomly placed at the same dinner table by Mickey Mouse himself. At the end of the dinner, we laughed out loud when the wait staff (and I am NOT kidding here) broke out into “It’s a Small World After All”. It’s the stuff movies are made of. While they circled around the dining room singing the Disney classic, I realized the power and reach of SAP mobility solutions.

Mobility truly impacts every business. Whether you work in a bakery, a consumer goods company, an oil refinery or a cruise line, SAP Mobility solutions can transform the way you do business. The number of companies who are deploying mobility solutions today is truly staggering. Even two years ago this chance meeting probably wouldn’t have happened. It happened because today mobility is everywhere.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week with SAP’s CIO Oliver Bussmann, talking about our predictions for what 2012 will bring (stay tuned for more on that topic). A good portion of these predictions center around how consumer technology will impact businesses around the world. The last two years have been significant – and it’s not going to slow down. There isn’t anything new to this story, but the adoption rates of consumer technology at work are skyrocketing.

Oliver had an opportunity here at CES to talk on a panel and discuss the impact of consumer trends on the enterprise. The panel discussion opened talking about the challenges of adopting consumer devices. Most of us are both consumers and employees so we can daily relate to this – I know I have the same expectation of a good user experience both at home and at work. The challenge then for IT is to satisfy the demands of employees while managing risk and security concerns. Oliver’s perspective on consumer mobility is that it has helped SAP to drive a mobility mindset of all employees. By providing developers, sales reps, marketing, operations and others with the tablets and smartphones they want, people start to think about mobility intrinsically. According to Oliver “Employees are embracing technology, using it, getting to know it, and want to use it in their work.”

One interesting perspective discussed at this session was that in the past IT had to drive users to accept technology. Today that has flipped – employees are driving the enterprise to adopt the technology they want. And because of this – price no longer drives the sale of technology. One panelist from Verizon stated that “it is the creativity – not the utility that drives the adoption of technology.”

Every discussion I have been a part of on this topic inevitably lands on the topic of management and security. I really liked a quote from another panelist: “Data and knowledge are assets and you have to protect those assets.” Everyone agrees wholeheartedly that any device (whether corporate owned or BYOD) needs to be secured. With the speed that the mobile market is moving, Oliver’s advice was to think beyond today’s devices – the future will bring many new devices and you need a tool that will give you flexibility to grow and change over time. Securing the content on devices is becoming more and more critical – driving to mobile application management as a key trend in 2012.

When we talk about productivity, we know that mobile devices drive increased productivity. Everyone in the room (including me) agreed when one panelist observed that “You don’t watch TV anymore without an iPhone or iPad in your hands.” Business doesn’t stop at 5:00pm or even 11:00pm – it is happening all the time. My phone is the last thing I check before owing to bed and the first thing I check in the morning. I believe that companies can probably recoup their annual costs of a device in a week or two simply through productivity increases.

Oliver noted “The combination of easy access and real time corporate information is what drives consumption.” We automatically think about productivity gains being achieved by replying to email, but the real benefit for executives is instant access to checking pipeline and the status of their business in real time. According to Oliver, this is the killer app. One last observation and bit of advice: “The CEO of the future has to understand the trends in the consumer market and make decisions on how to apply them. Consumerization is a trend that is unstoppable.”

Now, getting to our topic… What is a Mobility Center of Excellence? To make typing easier, I’ll shorten this to MCoE going forward. Vishy defines an MCoE as ‘an attempt to coalesce around a set of principles for an effective and efficient use of mobility across the entire enterprise’. The goal is to capturing learnings, best practices, and reference architectures from mobility projects within your company. Of course collecting is one thing – but the ultimate goal is to accelerate the adoption of mobility within your company.

A Mobility Center of Excellence can facilitate success by:

• Leveraging existing IT processes (standards, governance) and people;
• Defining standards, vendor and technology selection and security policies relevant to mobility;
• Acting as the trusted advisor to the line of business leaders;
• Reviewing, evaluating and approving mobility projects;
• During implementation, providing technology expertise to the business, authoring best practices, facilitating training and technical support;
• Post deployment, offering thought leadership, consulting on mobile technology, and providing metrics reporting and support.

If you think that this kind of approach makes sense for your business, it important to next understand how mature your company is in mobility. Everyone reading this is probably at different stages of mobility adoption and maturity. Regardless or where you are in terms of comfort and expertise, a mobility CoE has three dimensions to consider; scope, organization and governance. We’ll introduce the areas here and talk more about them in the next blog and in the webinar.

Scope: As a first order of business, you need to define the scope and the charter of the Mobility CoE. This is an essential element to grounding the MCoE for everything it does going forward. We recommend that you answer the following questions to help define the scope of your MCoE.

• What is the core function of the MCoE?
• How broad is the span of mobility capabilities that the MCoE covers?
• How will the MCoE interface with your existing IT organization?

Organization: Once the scope for the MCoE has been defined, the next element to review is the underlying organizational structure and associated ways of working. This starts with securing buy-in from major stakeholders across the organization. Since mobility has an impact across most of the organization, it is important to get sponsorship from senior and influential individuals across business and IT for the MCoE. The next steps are to outline the key roles and reporting structure and finding the right person to lead the CoE.

Governance: This element of the MCoE defines the ground rules for its operations, the funding model, the mechanism by which decisions are made, the criteria used to track its ongoing effectiveness, and the process for communicating key decisions and milestones to its stakeholders

These three areas will form the basis for what your CoE becomes and will evolve to. I encourage you to register for the live webinar to dive into this topic in more detail and to ask questions of Vishy and Mike Golz. Registration is available and the whitepaper will be available soon.

To get started on this topic, first we should explore some of the unique pressures that mobility is placing on enterprise IT departments. In future blogs, we’ll dive deeper into specific recommendations.

• There is an unprecedented rate of change across the ecosystem – The pace of change in innovation and technology in mobility is faster than other IT areas. This rapid pace of change results in the need for greater alignment between lines of business and IT on mobility initiatives, to prevent duplication of effort.
• Mobility has the potential to be applicable across the entire organization – Mobile devices are everywhere and being used by everyone from true road warriors to information works and well beyond. This pervasiveness creates opportunities to make employees more productive, to engage with customers in a more targeted and deep way, and to collaborate with partners in a streamlined fashion. IT needs to be ready to meet a diverse set of requirements while being agile to meet these needs in a timely manner.
• End user expectations of delivery lifecycles are significantly different – As consumers ourselves, we are used to the relatively smooth and easy process of downloading and using mobile apps from the various app stores. This experience has conditioned people to expect a relatively rapid application development (and enhancement) timeline, without compromising on the quality and user experience of the application.
• There are implications for security – Enterprise IT needs to put in place the appropriate infrastructure, processes, and organization to ensure it can get the desired visibility and control across the lifecycle of these mobile assets (devices, users, and applications). The blurring of lines between professional and personal devices leads to diversity and complexity, as well as data security considerations. IT needs a robust set of tools that automate as much as possible the operational complexities of a mobile infrastructure and still provide actionable insights to deal with issues and exceptions as needed.

Now that we understand the context of today’s mobile environment, we can next look at what a Mobility Center of Excellence actually is. In essence, it is an attempt to coalesce around a set of principles—organizational and architectural—for an effective and efficient use of mobility across the entire enterprise. I’ll dive deeper into Vishy’s opinions on this topic in the next blog. For now, don’t forget to register for the webinar. You’ll also receive a copy of the whitepaper when you register.

A highlight of the day was the keynote session discussion with Mark Aboud, Managing Director of SAP Canada and Amanda Lane, CBC reporter. One of the lines that stuck with me was that “productivity is about working smart”. Amanda Lane speaks and writes about productivity and innovation and she explained that “productivity is an indicator of wealth – when productivity goes up we get richer, when it goes down we get poorer.” The conversation got me thinking about how mobility can help employees, partners and customers work smarter and be more productive.

The conversation dove deeper into the topic of innovation – since this is what makes businesses more productive. Today’s enterprises need to focus on innovation. But how exactly do you innovate? According to Amanda, “you simply encourage people to ask why or why not… Ask yourself ‘what am I doing to be more innovative every day’.”

Sometime we think that innovation has to be a big deal – perhaps a think tank set apart from everyday operations of your company. But the more important venue for innovation is with every employee in their everyday activities. Innovation is not about invention. It is about finding ways to do things better. I think executives wrestle with how to encourage innovation at the ‘everyday’ level – and with how to use technology to do this. Mobility is an area where we can truly innovate in everyday activities. I recently spoke with a customer who ran a contest for their employees. The concept was simple – submit ideas on how mobility could possibly improve your day to day job. The response was overwhelming and the ideas came flooding in. All submissions are being considered as a possible use cases for the company’s mobile applications initiative. Now that is innovation.

In the World Tour keynote, Mark About made a very valid comment; “If people don’t have the right tools and information they get dissatisfied.” If they have the potential to contribute to innovation and increase their own productivity, employees will be happy. Mobility really gives enterprises a fantastic opportunity to innovate.

During the keynote, they talked about Service Innovation being one of the most important areas for companies to focus on. I think the opportunity for mobility to truly transform how services are delivered is incredible. Just think of the potential for customer self-service via mobile devices, for retailers to offer customized services to individuals based on their unique needs, for employees to deliver world-class service based on up-to-the-minute data. The opportunities are endless and the technology is here today.

The mobility sessions and conversations at World Tour Toronto offered a lot of food for thought in this area. The first mobility session, delivered to a room filled to overflowing, featured John Ramsell (VP of mobility at SAP) who discussed how SAP not only offers a wide range of mobility solutions to our customers and partners, but also how we run mobility in-house. Josh Bentley (IT at SAP) shared how SAP had embraced mobility across the company with over 11,000 iPads, 22,000 BlackBerry smartphones, and over 3000 iPhones. Carol Richardson (operations for Canada) shared fantastic demos of how we use our own mobile analytics solutions to gain instant insight into company operations. This has transformed how we run our business with a change from weekly reports to instant reports.

As a consumer (especially working in this industry) I am sometimes frustrated by companies who aren’t addressing the opportunities of mobility today. But as an SAP employee, I’m excited that our customers are the innovators who will change this by deploying game changing mobility solutions tomorrow.

The technology is here people – let’s take advantage of it!

1. Lay a mobile foundation.

Start with mobile in mind. I like the way a colleague talks about this. At a recent conference our Sybase Unwired Platform product marketing expert, Carolyn Fitton, asked “What do you get if you mobilize a broken process?” The answer is “a broken mobile process.” The truth of the matter is that mobility won’t fix broken processes – to be successful you need to start by rethinking the actual business process being mobilized.

2. Think agnostic.

The devices that are popular today may or may not be here tomorrow – things are constantly changing. If you look back over the year 2011, you’ll note that it’s been an incredible eventful year in mobility. With the loss of WebOS and Symbian, the rise of iPad, the quick uptake of Android, and the acquisition of Motorola by Google – we’re in for an interesting 2012. For this very reason, a long-term mobile apps strategy will require apps to be agnostic in many aspects. In the whitepaper Chris Marsh specifies that they need to be agnostic “of the different OSs supported, of the platform on which apps are developed and of the back-end systems they utilize.”

3. Focus on the UX.

In mobility, the user is king. You’ll see that the concept of user experience is a common thread throughout the entire whitepaper. Companies need to keep this is mind from day 1 – invest in UX so apps are easy to use and meet the standards that people are used to in their personal lives. You don’t have to make your app look like Angry Birds, but you do need to make it easy to use and navigate.

4. Build in security from the start.

When we talk about security, we are our own worst enemies. After all we’re only humans and we’re working with easy to lose devices (trust me I’ve lost a few). Unfortunately, we leave devices in airplanes or taxis (or both), and they can easily be stolen. Chris suggests you “carefully consider the degree and type of security required and make sure there are contingencies in place to handle a security breach if it occurs.”

5. Think about where social adds the most value.

Just as mobility is changing the enterprise, so is social networking. Chris discusses how social is increasingly used to “bind platforms together into a sticky proposition”. Consider how social features will add the best value to your mobile applications.

With a foundation that takes these 5 aspects into consideration, you’ll be in a good place to start. Please remember that you can listen to the webinar on November 1st from 1-2pm eastern. Chris Marsh and SAP’s senior VP of Mobility, Dan Mahowald, will also take live questions.