Why Mobility in ERP Matters to Small and Midsized Businesses

Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) that are looking to update from Quickbooks to an ERP systems – take note. Mobility-enabled ERP should be at the top of your requirements list. Sounds too newfangled? You’re just looking to move to a full-fledged ERP system but not looking for all the bells and whistles? That’s the wrong way to look at it.  As a SMB company, your chief concern is driving growth – expanding your business, scaling to new locations, and adding new divisions.  Well, that is the reason to evaluate an ERP system that has the ability to support growth. While first and foremost, you should look for a complete, pre-integrated solution that offers coverage of all of your key business processes so you can run your business, why should a “complete” solution not also include mobile enablement?  We order take-out on our iPhones, we rate our favorite restaurants, and play games all day. We essentially interact on our phones the majority of our non-working and working day. SMB execs are even more likely tied to their phones – getting business done on the fly. Why should they not be able to approve important sales orders, track freight shipments, approve time-sensitive and operational-critical access requests, all on their iPad or Blackberry? There is absolutely no reason why ERP mobility enablement is not at the top of your list.

A recent study completed by Aberdeen Group, “Mobility in ERP 2011” shows that “best-in-class” companies shared several common characteristics, including:

·         More than three times as likely as all others to make mobility strategy an inherent part of their ERP implementation

·         68% more likely than all others to notify decision makers immediately if exceptions in business processes occur, regardless of time or location

·         Twice as likely to be using mobile devices to automatically collect data for ERP data entry

These “best-in-class” companies have the following performance advantages over laggard companies:

·         90% less time spent looking for information

·         7x faster time to decision

·         19% better inventory accuracy

So SMBs – take a page from the big guys. Become “best-in-class” to enable your growth while managing operational costs.  More and more companies are looking for mobility to support the way they do business. In fact, the top driver for investing in mobility is cost reduction.  Out of 99 manufacturing companies surveyed in Aberdeen’s study, “ERP in Manufacturing: Measuring Business Benefit and Time to Value,” 44% note that ERP is a key component in reducing cost of operations. Access to ERP for mobile workers is second to reducing costs, at 39% of respondents.

Let’s take the example of ERP payment approvals. As a cash manager or financial executive, your priority is to ensure the liquidity of your company at any time. In this context, you have to check certain outgoing payments before the corresponding payment media are created and sent to the bank.  If your ERP financials were accessible on your mobile device, you could get notified of payments that need to be approved or rejected and address them at any time on-the-go instead of waiting to get back to the office to do it. SAP will be delivering an iPhone app like this in September for SAP ERP 6.0, amongst other apps like ERP Order Status for sales reps to check orders and an ERP Customer Financial Fact Sheet app for sales reps to check the financial situation of customers.  (See screenshot below).

Clearly, mobility will be used mostly by mobile workers, such as sales reps, field service, and warehouse employees. But mobility to support non-mobile workers that make time-sensitive decisions based on ERP data is just as important. Visibility and quick access to information leveraging mobile devices means folks are spending less time chasing down information in reports and ERP systems at their desks. ERP mobility can be part of a larger strategy to get information to the right people at the right time so you can power your employees to act.  

SMBs that need to empower every employee to be productive and efficient while managing growth at the same time can’t afford to let mobility in ERP be an afterthought. Set priorities on what roles and functions get mobile access to ERP and ensure that mobility in ERP is part of your larger strategy as you being to standardize your systems. According to Aberdeen, only about half of management and sales are using their mobile devices to access ERP data − that’s just abysmal. Learn from the big companies --- identifying the right device, for the right role, with the right level of ERP access will lead to improvements beyond your typical ERP implementation. But that requires context and strategy setting. Be clear on your goals and make mobility work for you.