Empower your Warehouse Personnel with an SAP Mobile Inventory and Warehouse Management Solution

Inventory and Warehouse Management plays a crucial role in an organization’s supply chain model. It is basically knowing what is on hand, where it is in use and how much is the resultant finished product. In other words, it basically refers to the process of efficiently overseeing the constant flow of units into and out of existing inventory. It is more to do with the balancing of stock vis-à-vis requirements of various warehouses/plants that operate within the organization’s SCM space. In fact, effective inventory management should control the transfer of units to restrict the inventory from becoming too high or fall too low levels, putting the company’s operations into the doldrums. Also from a cost angle, it should seek to control the inventory costs, both from the perspective of the total value of the goods included and the tax burden generated by the cumulative value of the inventory.

Primarily, effective inventory management hinges on three key aspects:

Time

Understanding how much time it takes for a supplier to process an order and execute a delivery is one of the key factors of effective inventory management. Apart from that, it is also concerned with the time that is needed for those materials to transfer out of the inventory to be established.

Buffer Stock estimation

Estimating the amount of buffer stock that is available is also a key factor in effective inventory management. Buffer stock refers to the additional units that are beyond the minimum number required to maintain production levels. Creating such a buffer helps to minimize the chance for production to disrupt on account of lack of vital components in the operation supply inventory. Also, tracking materials as they are used to produce finished products helps to identify the need to adjust ordering amounts, as soon as the raw material inventory falls perilously low or is inflated to an unfavorable level.

Maintenance of accurate records

Finally, inventory management also relates to maintaining accurate records of finished goods that are ready for delivery. This implies posting the production of newly finished goods to the inventory totals as well as deducting the most recent shipments of finished goods to buyers. Accurately, keeping a tab on the figures on the finished goods inventory enables in quick dissemination of information to sales personnel as to what is available and ready to deliver at a given point of time.

From the light of the above discussion, a good ERP system can certainly do wonders to help an organization to optimize its existing inventory operations, in addition to improving critical product deliveries and building long-lasting customer relationships. Most of the organizations have invested heavily in SAP ERP systems, offering a plethora of value-added benefits, including improving their overall return on investment (RoI), However, a one step ahead in this direction is the advent of mobility in ERP, which is aimed to take inventory to the next level – providing access to inventory data to a multitude of users in real-time, anywhere, anytime.

From the light of the above discussion, an SAP mobile management solution can be leveraged to optimize the existing inventory operations of an organization, in addition to improving critical product deliveries and building long-lasting customer relationships.

Key-value drivers of an SAP mobile 

inventory solution

Companies are slowly exploring ways to integrate their existing ERP systems with some good commercially viable mobile solutions to handle a plethora of inventory transactions on the fly without even the need for its users to access their desktops. Against this backdrop, a good SAP mobile inventory solution can fit perfectly, seamlessly syncing with the SAP server to retrieve and process transactions as well as set up a unified communication setup.

One of the biggest benefits of using a mobile inventory solution is the ability to hold your entire inventory in your hand, which means easy stock management. When you mobilize your inventory, you can instantly find an item in your database, just by entering a description or item number; or with an integrated barcode scanning feature, you can even scan and retrieve the basic product data.

Apart from that, being informed when items go out of stock, or their availability can help inventory or store managers to make informed decisions. In fact, investing in a good SAP mobile inventory solution can efficiently help you manage inventory – saving great deal of time and money, taking your business to the next level.

The next question that arises in our mind is what is the best SAP mobile inventory management solution that we can look for? Though there are a quite a few commercially viable solutions in the market, organizations are looking to invest in the solution that can comprehensively address the multifaceted requirements of its users, within the broad scope of SCM and Logistics.

From this perspective, Innovapptive solutions, a premier SAP partner came out with a perfect mobile inventory management solution – mInventory that can address the unique requirements of the industry. mInventory is designed to support the existing SAP users, who could be store managers, delivery managers and other professionals taking care of the day to day inventory operations. It offers a seamless, intuitive and enriching inventory management experience at the comfort of their phones.

Using mInventory, you can perform day to day inventory transactions including tracking the status of the stock at your warehouses/plant at a given point of time; process goods receivables, stock issues, inbound/outbound transactions, and asset transfers. With mInventory, you can ensure real-time transaction processing, enhanced data accuracy, and improved mobility and convenience.

One of the key differentiators that distinguish mInventory from other products is the flexibility that it provides to help you accomplish unlimited customizations with simple SAP configurations. Whether you want to add/remove new fields, modules or even change the business logic, you can easily accomplish using our proprietary product - Rapid App Configurator Engine (RACE). And the best part is you need not change a bit of the code - no need to hire costly Mobile UI/UX designer, iOS, Android or Appcelerator developer.

Key Features and Value Drivers

• Ruggedized peripherals for RFID, Bar Code or QR Code Scans.
• Scan RFIDs, Bar Codes and QR Codes to ship and receive inventory.
• Accept and distribute incoming materials by purchase order.
• View stock detail information at the plant, storage location, and batch level, anytime, anywhere.
• Pre-pick materials and issue, return or transfer goods electronically.
• Ensure inventory cycle count scheduling, counting, and adjustments.
• Print packing slips and bill of lading documents from SAP wirelessly.
• Print USPS, FedEx, and UPS shipping labels.
• Check availability of materials while on the job.

Business Benefits

• • Perform physical and cycle counts quickly and achieves 98% accuracy of inventory levels.

• • Streamline inventory cycle counting and reduce the number of FTEs for cycle counting.

• • Speed up receipt and back-order reporting to and from shipping/receiving by over 35%.

• • Reduce inventory carrying costs by 5 – 10%.

• • Manage physical inventory movement in real-time and improve inventory accuracy by 30%.

• • Eliminate investments inexpensive RFID guns and consoles to tighten your supply chain, service responses and order fulfillment.

• • Streamline goods receipts, issues, transfers and returns.

• • Streamline data processing on receivables.

• Manage rolling inventories, satellite storerooms and truck/trunk stock.

If you would like a demo of Innovapptive's portfolio of Native or Web based mobile solutions, please click on the link. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss with an Innovapptive solution expert, you can reach out to us by emailing us at sales@innovapptive.com or you can reach a sales representative at (713) 275-1804. 

SAP Fiori – 8 Key Considerations for a Successful Implementation

SAP Fiori is a new-age user experience (UX) for SAP, based on modern design principles that provides a holistic and a consistent experience across different devices, accomplishes quick insight-to-action anytime and anywhere and much more. There are innumerable apps that are currently applying the SAP Fiori UX to provide greater user productivity and personalization for customers, who use SAP Business Suite on any database and SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. SAP Fiori supports not just apps, but also a variety of roles in diverse functional areas of business including HR, finance, manufacturing, procurement, and sales. The 300+ collection of apps from Fiori are light-weight and designed for routine tasks to improve productivity.

Why SAP Fiori over other applications? 

• Good user experience
• Responsive design that runs on most platforms
• Cost-effective with no additional licensing fees
• Alignment with SAP user experience strategy
• Availability of off the shelf apps that can be modified
• Ability to develop your own custom apps with a consistent quality approach
• Simple infrastructure footprint that’s a logical extension of the existing SAP infrastructure

8 Key Considerations to a Successful SAP Fiori Implementation

Deploying SAP Fiori at a client’s place involves a lot of factors including their current technological landscape, unique user requirements, and security. As part of Innovapptive’s key implementation strategies across a wide range of clients, specifically with SAP Fiori apps, we bring forth some of the key lessons that are learned during our clients’ implementations.

• Don’t assume that SAP Fiori is just a simplified ‘copy’ of backend functionality

SAP Fiori is much more than a mere copy of backend functionality. The diversity of the configuration in SAP backend processes is huge. Most of the organizations take some time in setting up their SAP mobile platform, just to ensure that their backend processes are customized in a different way for standard SAP apps to work.

• Ensure that all critical functionality is tested

Once the deployment phase ends, the most crucial phase is the testing phase that needs to be designed, based on your organization’s deployment strategy and diverse requirements of the users. Devise a suitable test plan, considering your organization’s infrastructure landscape, security and above all the varied requirements of your users that you intend to target. You can test the Fiori application on local Tomcat Sandbox, ABAP system and also on the Fiori Launchpad.

• Partner closely with SAP Fiori Ramp Up support

SAP Ramp-Up is SAP's early adoption program for customers, who want to go live with SAP’s software applications as soon as possible. This ensures that your customers realize the benefits of SAP’s new solutions ahead of their competitors. SAP Ramp up is a collaborative effort of field, support and development teams to offer a program for secure and cost-effective implementation. Hence, it’s imperative that your organization constantly partners closely with SAP Fiori to ensure that it gets proper Ramp-up support to enable you with an overview of solutions currently in Ramp-Up and upcoming programs in the Ramp-Up.

• Test the UI on the most popular browsers

As part of the testing phase, you need to install and run SAP Fiori apps on multiple browsers including checking the browser compatibility, unexpected behavior (if any) and UI responsiveness. From the technological perspective, test the UI on most widely used HTML-5 capable browsers (Google Chrome and IE 10 and above) and evaluate the performance metrics and other parameters. 

• Leverage the SAP Fiori Launchpad to improve performance and solution stability on mobile devices 

The SAP Fiori Launchpad is a framework that can run one Fiori app or a series of Fiori apps. The Fiori app a user can access in the Launchpad varies, depending on the user and what apps are assigned to that user or that user’s role. SAP Fiori Launchpad is a shell that hosts SAP Fiori apps and offers apps with certain value-added services such as navigation, personalization, embedded support, and application configuration. Some of the value-added features that you can accrue by leveraging SAP Fiori Launchpad include:

• • Personalization of the Layout
  • Responsive Design
  • Search Capabilities
  • Theming and Branding 

• Address the security architecture early, since mobile access and SSO can get very complicated

You need to have the authorizations on the frontend server for every single app (start authorizations for OData) services in order to access HTML5 based app/UI and the SAP Fiori Launchpad that is used by all apps as an entry point. In other words, security architecture needs to be in place to avoid any unexpected behaviors creeping up later. In fact, when you update SAP Fiori, it should not impact existing authorizations and moreover, when introducing new apps, these should flawlessly integrate into existing authorization concepts.

• The more dated your SAP backend dependent application versions are, the more problematic your SAP Fiori app implementation will become, even if you meet the basic system requirements 

The SAP Fiori related software components required at the backend server depends on the release level of the backend server. Also, the principal or the transactional apps run on older backend server releases such as SAP NetWeaver Release 7.00 or higher but below 7.40 and ECC 600/SRM 7.00 or higher. Hence, the above point as enlisted above assumes significance and has to be kept in mind, when embarking on SAP Fiori implementation.

• Decide what strategy you need to use to make systems internet-accessible instantly

 To address these issues, try to answer the following questions: 

• • • Will the development Fiori landscape be accessible to internet users simultaneously with PRD Fiori?

• • Did the client do the QA testing internally on iPads, using internal URL that bypassed external authentication/external URLs? 

The Innovapptive - SAP Fiori RDS: Fast and Simple to Implement

Taking into account the varied usage patterns, Innovapptive’s portfolio - SAP UI5 and native mobile solutions addresses the diverse set of enterprise users’ needs and compliments your organization’s overall SAP Fiori Strategy.

Innovapptive's SAP-Qualified Rapid Deployment Solution (RDS) for SAP Fiori includes the new SAP Fiori apps and enables the implementation of SAP NetWeaver Gateway, SAP UI5 and one or more Fiori Apps for full productive purposes in a fixed time and fixed price. SAP Fiori apps provide a simple and easy to use consumer-grade user experience that work seamlessly across devices – desktop, tablet or smartphone. Innovapptive’s RDS implementation for SAP Fiori operationalizes your workforce immediately and brings instant value to your enterprise.

If you would like a demo of Innovapptive's portfolio of Native or Web based mobile solutions, please click on the link. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss with an Innovapptive solution expert, you can reach out to us by emailing us at sales@innovapptive.com or you can reach a sales representative at (713) 275-1804. 

Key Functional Areas to Consider when Selecting a Mobile Work Order Solution

In the light of asset intensive industries embracing automation and mobility like never before, a good work order management software assumes significance to take care of the varied industry needs, address their unique challenges and add value to their existing operational workflows.  Since asset intensive industries such as oil & gas or manufacturing have assets running into several millions of dollars, it is pertinent that a prudent and an efficient asset management program be embarked. One of the major goals of asset management is how effectively work orders can be generated and tracked and at the time how they can effectively fulfil the purpose of strong plant or asset maintenance including fixing equipment failures or replacing existing assets with new assets.

This blog tries to explore the aspect of work order management from a business perspective, throwing light on what points you need to consider, before planning to invest on the right mobile work order tracking software.

What is the objective of the work order management software?

A work order refers to a job order created internally in an organization to perform a specific task. It is usually an order related to maintenance or repair request, generated by the quality inspector and sent to his plant personnel.

A right work order management software has to solve two goals: accomplish quality work more swiftly and at the same time with less cost. An effective work order management software minimizes the friction between pronouncing work instructions and effectively executing them. Apart from that, it provides a perfect channel for key decision makers to analyze completed work to track process inefficiencies and identify how these inefficiencies can be plugged.

Now let’s take a look at some of the critical aspects from a functional perspective that one need to look before planning to invest in such a software:

• Work requests and order creation: At the rudimentary level, a work order software should enable you to create a document or a note that can be tracked, identifying what work needs to done and how it can be completed. Even this basic step is aimed to improve the efficiency of the workforce tremendously, wherein employees can rapidly and accurately convey work requests and instructions.

• Scheduling and resource allocation: This is one of the major operational aspects that one need to consider while looking for a good work order tracking system. Determining who need to be assigned work, what is required to complete it and when it should be completed is an important task within work order management. A work order management solution should maintain a database of information that should identify what equipment and materials are required to complete each type of job. Apart from that, a perfect work order system should include calendaring tools to optimize equipment and usage of labor resources.

• Change orders: A comprehensive work order management should include the capability to take care of dynamic change orders, as there is always a possibility of changes to the scope of work or method of completion, even after the work order is created.

• Status updates and monitoring the completion of activities: A good work order management software should provide complete visibility into the completion of jobs. Being able to accurately predict the work order completion can be the most efficient aspect in ensuring immense customer satisfaction.

• Reporting: A work order management system should provide a rich source of data about your operational efficiency. Reporting tools in the work order system should help you convert this data into actionable information for improving your processes. Having good reporting tools integrated into the software can help you evaluate the key performance indicators on completed work pertaining to error rates, adherence to quality standards and time of completion.

• Remote and mobile access: Though most of the mobile work management software solutions can provide this capability, however, the significant aspect that one needs to consider is the security and the ease with which the data can be accessed, providing a seamless integration with your organization’s backend systems.

Innovapptive’s offers a turnkey native mobile solution for Work Order Management

Innovapptive Inc., a premier SAP certified partner has thoroughly researched and assessed the key requirements of the asset intensive organizations, particularly the pain points encountered by such organizations to generate work orders and to effectively get them executed. To mitigate these challenges and above all help organizations derive maximum value out of their investments, Innovapptive Solutions came out with a cutting edge mobile work order management solution – mWorkOrder. mWorkOrder leverages the SAP’s Plant Maintenance module at the back-end to deliver a consistent, reliable and a productive asset maintenance experience across a wide range of industries.

Using mWorkOrder, a quality inspector can notify their field personnel and technicians about an asset that needs maintenance/repair or even update an existing work order to let their field personnel accomplish a specific maintenance task of an equipment/machinery in their factory premises. On the other hand, field technicians can constantly keep track and update the status pertaining to their notifications/work orders or even fill up time sheets to keep track of the time spent on their respective activities.

If you would like a demo of Innovapptive’s portfolio of Native or Web based mobile solutions, please click on the link. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss with an Innovapptive solution expert, you can reach out to us by emailing us at sales@innovapptive.com or you can reach a sales representative at (713) 275-1804.

How are work orders processed from mWorkOrder solution?

In a typical scenario, once a quality inspector gets a notification, he/she can inspect the proposed equipment/asset that needs maintenance and immediately raise a work order against the notification. Alternatively, he/she can proceed to create a work order directly without reference to any notification.

Using the Work Orders module in this application, a quality inspector can create and release work orders from anywhere, anytime directly from a mobile device. Work orders are created in the SAP Plant Maintenance module based on existing business practices and assigned to field workers. On the other hand, field users can directly search and modify a work order that may be related to any equipment maintenance, repair or replacement of any parts for that equipment. In addition to that, you can even edit a work order to suit your dynamic requirements.  Work order can be created under three primary sections such as Header (primary details of work order), Operations (details of sub-tasks with respective start and finish dates) and components (details of spare parts required to execute a work order successfully).

Key Differentiators 

• Aligned with SAP’s mobile strategy.
• Runs on SAP mobile Platform OData & HANA Cloud Platform Mobile Services.
• Synchronous updates based on OData technology – minimized Offline dependency and conflict resolution
• Allows unlimited customizations with simple SAP configurations without a bit of code change.
• Quick deployment of 8 to 12 weeks.
• Winner of SAP Pinnacle Award and SAP Mobile App Challenge.

Business Benefits

• Extend and improve asset life and reliability.
• Improve plant, fleet and equipment performance.
• Improve workforce safety and productivity.
• Minimize accidents, failures and outages.
• Reduce unplanned downtime and maintenance backlog.
• Improve first-time resolution rates.
• Enhance the efficiency of warehouse, plant, field and accounts payable personnel.
• Ensure assets run at peak performance with shorter response times and timely maintenance.
• Complete safety checks and adhere to safe practices.

Conclusion

This blog provided an overview of what functional aspects one need to look into before embarking on a good work order tracking software and also threw light on how Innovapptive’s mWorkOrder solution can perfectly suit the dynamic requirements of an organization, adding value to their existing workflows, cut costs and drive workforce efficiency.

How Automation of Approval Workflow can Transform Operational Performance

 

One of the major challenges faced by enterprises is the timely approval of key processes that have an impact on their business operations. For a large or a medium sized enterprise consisting of a couple of departments, there could be defined hierarchical workflows, which entitles any executive working in a department to seek physical approvals from all his line managers that could be a cumbersome process. In some instances, if the line manager who is entitled to authorize a particular transaction is absent or unavailable, the approval process gets delayed further, effecting critical or inter-related activities amounting to huge losses to the organization. This demands automation in approvals workflow to mitigate the above scenarios.

In other words, the inability of your work force to make real time decisions creates an inefficient process and lowers the adoption rate of your expensive investments in an ERP and SAP system. Employees always tend to find the least resistance path to get their job done, which then creates a breakdown in standard processes. To mitigate these problems, enterprises must look to empower their workforce to carry out their work anywhere, anytime.

Key challenges of manual approvals

• Slow approval process, delayed delivery of goods and late invoice payments
• Missed early payment discounts and incomplete invoice management transparency
• Lack of knowledge of current approval status of a document or a start-to-finish approval process history.
• Non-uniform document approval processes
• Missing compliance requirements or non-compliances due to inordinate delays.

Considering the above pain points and challenges encountered by organizations due to manual processes, it becomes prudent for any organization to automate approval workflow processes for a slew of benefits.

Key reasons to automate approval workflows

1. Streamlines recurring business processes

One of the major advantages of approval process automation is the streamlined business activities, particularly repeatable business activities that pertains to document management and delivery. This implies simple workgroup tasks to complete enterprise-wide processes, thereby enabling organizations to standardize and streamline people-based activities and track their progress. This way, you can avoid errors due to repeated processes, establish simplified business practices and help your organization accrue significant gains in productivity and operational efficiency.

2. Minimizes costs and offers a rapid RoI

Automation helps organizations to achieve a substantial return on investment (RoI) by offering rapidly deployable process automation tools, eliminating time-consuming and costly manual routines. Apart from that, they integrate human resources with information and processes they need to drive revenue and cut costs. This increases the productivity of current IT investments to deliver a high and measurable ROI. 

3. Enforces accountability and compliancy

Automation helps enforce accountability and improves timely compliances by automating, standardizing and tracking core business processes, helping organizations to perfectly know what tasks need to be attended on a priority basis. Apart from that, it also helps organizations to manage information access to safeguard information security and privacy.

4. Optimizes time and helps in quick decision making process

Once your organization’s workflow is configured, tasks are automatically assigned and delivered to the members within your team including email notifications about the tasks that need to be accomplished. This way managers cannot miss key approvals, even if they are on a vacation, which means optimizing time, resources and helping in quick decision making process.

5. Helps in maintaining cordial relationships with customers and suppliers

Having an effective workflow system helps an organization to obtain timely approvals with respect to purchasing new material from vendors, offering support to external customers or even expediting timely deliverables to your customers. All this translates to mutual trust and confidence reposed in your organization from all the key stakeholders, which is a key performance metric for your organizational efficiency.

6. Instant and accurate information access across various departments of an organization

When there is an inefficient workflow solution, often people in one department fails to easily access key information from a different department or application. This is a sheer waste of time and resources.  With an automated workflow solution, you can easily access data and streamline information processing, thereby helping key users to expedite approvals at any point of time. Apart from that, it enables incorporation of access rules to control and track data access for any given process.

Mobile Universal Approvals Solution Overview

The next big leap in automation is the increased usage of mobile solutions for securing approvals – the added advantage being accessibility of core data anytime, anywhere, without the need to constantly being attached to desktops or laptops. Though there are quite a number of players in the market offering innovative solutions in this spectrum, Innovapptive, a premier SAP partner has come out with a cutting edge universal approvals solution – mWorklist that transforms and redefines the way approvals are processed and expedited. The solution is designed to support the existing SAP users, who could be executives, managers or departmental heads, engaged in process approvals as per their departmental hierarchy.

mWorklist tightly integrates with your SAP system, automating the approval workflows of various departments within your organization, thereby offering a robust and a comprehensive approval management experience across a wide range of industries. Take for instance a production department in an organization that could have hundreds of processes such as purchasing raw materials, raising invoices, supplying the goods to its customers, attending to leave requests of employees and so on. Based on a requisition raised by an executive within that department for accomplishing a specific work order, that request has to be routed to his immediate superiors for approval as per the defined departmental hierarchy and subsequently reach the production manager for final approval. Manually, this approval process may take several days, and even might be lost in the transit; but with mWorklist the entire process can be automated, with approvals just a click away – anytime, anywhere, even when his managers are physically absent in their office.

Using mWorklist, you can a process a series of transactions involving timely approvals related to purchase orders, expense reports, time sheets, contracts, shopping carts and much more from the comfort of your mobile, anywhere, anytime. mWorklist lets you access the master and transactional data of the various modules (Inventory, HR, etc.) of the SAP server and pulls the transactions that needs approval to enable you to subsequently process such requests.  This solution also provides the flexibility to forward (delegate) the requisitions from your Inbox to any of your peer managers, in case you are on a vacation. With mWorklist, you can ensure real-time transaction approval processing, data accuracy and improved mobility and convenience.

Key Value Drivers

• Faster transaction processing
• Reduced cycle time for approvals
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Improved operational efficiency

 Key Features

• Push Notifications

Drive pro-active decision making, enhance mobile adoption and engage your employees.

• Badges

Badges indicate that a new work-item is waiting. Get informed on your pending items on the home screen.

• Collective Approvals

Simultaneously approve or reject all requisitions with a single click.

• Substitutions

Integrated substitution functionality to delegate Inbox when you are on a vacation.

• Custom Dashboard

Easily rearrange, hide and show your work-items based on priority and usage.

• Offline Mode

Execute your Inbox even when you’re out of network coverage and sync once you’re back in coverage.

• Generic Framework Container

Configure and integrate any customer workflow and work item that is not available in the apps standard approvals.

Business Processes Automation

• Automate business processes such as blocked invoices by creating a goods receipt or service entry sheet with a few clicks.
• Integrate your SAP BPM processes and run them anywhere, anytime.

If you would like a demo of Innovapptive’s portfolio of Native or Web based mobile solutions, please click on the link. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss with an Innovapptive solution expert, you can reach out to us by emailing us at sales@innovapptive.com or you can reach a sales representative at (713) 275-1804.