Why Re-invent the Wheel ? Aren’t the wheels right here in the SAP Store?

Consumer mobile technology is a phenomenon that has revolutionized the way we live and work. The human brain has become accustomed to a mobile app for every task we perform and we are on the constant look out for apps to ease our lives. A perfect example of consumer mobile technology in action was depicted earlier today, when I wrapped up a potential customer meeting in Boston and was running late to catch a flight to Houston. Through the United Airlines’ mobile app, I was empowered to not only change my flight in seconds but also complete a check in and have my boarding pass readily available on my mobile app. The Taxi ride to the Boston Logan airport was an extremely productive one as I performed several other tasks from checking my corporate credit card statement to checking my stock portfolio and I started to reflect upon the endless possibilities of unwiring an enterprise through mobility. As I reached the airport and waited for my flight, I continued to ponder over these endless unwired possibilities specific to our SAP customers and their need to rapidly mobilize their workforce.

Rapid mobilization of enterprises is possible through pre-packaged SAP mobile applications or cloud mobility solutions and yet customers have not widely embraced either one and it makes one wonder “Why have SAP customers not embraced pre-packaged SAP mobile applications or cloud mobility solutions to rapidly mobilize their workforce?” I continued to ponder over this question and upon recollecting all my conversations with our potential customers, I began to connect the dots to understand our customers inability to rapidly mobilize their workforce. As I reflected upon all my conversations, I was finally able to connect the dots to answer several open questions that bothered me for over a year now. I am confident that this blog will help several others like me that have pondered over the same questions.

So, What has been the push back for decision makers to embrace pre-packaged SAP mobile apps or SAP Mobile Apps on the cloud? Why are most enterprises building mobile apps in-house?, despite the tremendous challenges and complexities they face to address their employee’s BYOD needs and not to forget the time to deploy and manage these mobile apps.

Did these enterprises not outline a comprehensive enterprise mobility strategy? Did these enterprises not anticipate the Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) push? Did they not recognize the challenges of building a cross-platform SAP mobile app? Were they not cognizant of the complexities to manage dynamically evolving Mobile OS upgrades?

As I probed into these questions, I realized that most enterprises were aware of the above challenges but were handicapped with the options that they had commercially available. When our potential customers were asked on “Why Re-invent the Wheel ? why they had not considered pre-packaged mobile apps or a cloud mobility solutions” to address their challenges most of the responses fell into one of the below categories;

• Most pre-packaged SAP mobile apps do not have a clear business case or a use case
• Most pre-packaged SAP mobile apps are quick look up apps that can easily and quickly designed and developed in-house.
• Cost-benefit analysis to purchase and deploy a few simple quick look up apps does not make a compelling business case to purchase from a mobile app provider.
• Most pre-packaged SAP mobile apps have been built to market mobile app provider’s capabilities and not to truly resolve critical business challenges
• Most commercial pre-packaged mobile apps don’t incorporate ‘design thinking’ within the mobile application development lifecycle.
• Enterprises hate dealing with several vendors for different types of mobile applications by process/industry.

When I categorized these general themes, I started to question myself on what we at Innovapptive were really doing, and if we were truly resolving customer pain points to radiply mobilize their workforce. My defensive self jumped to say “Yes, of course”, “we have addressed these customer concerns through several SAP certified mobile apps and we provide them on the cloud through our Enterprise Mobility as a Service (EMaaS) to rapidly mobilize our customers and also resolve their BYOD challenges.

“But, was I being true to myself? May be not! So what can we further do at Innovapptive, to rapidly mobilize our customers?”

At Innovapptive, we have been extremely excited about becoming the #1 SAP Mobile App provider solely based on the sheer volume of apps that we will certify by end of April. To compliment this volume, we have been consistently receiving positive feedback from our customers and SAP on how our SAP certified mobile apps make a complicated business process – simple, intuitive and consumer app like. This surely is a great achievement for us as a company and I am extremely proud of our high performing team. This achievement will bring us the deserved limelight and Innovapptive will win several enterprise mobility consulting projects and get busy implementing these projects over the next few months.

However, I am not convinced if our customers completely win through this successful journey and if our journey addresses all the pain points outlined in this blog? Does it? May be not, and a Robert Frost Poem comes to my mind “The Woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

At Innovapptive, customers are always at the forefront and there is no bigger satisfaction than resolving customer challenges. As we march towards becoming a leading SAP Mobile App provider in 2013, our commitment is to go beyond the ordinary and go beyond selfish motives to truly make a difference to the SAP Enterprise Mobility Comunity. Moving forward, Innovapptive will focus on resolving these customer challenges to rapidly mobilize their workforce.

As I fall short of time to brain dump our complete vision to support rapid mobilization, I would like to wrap up this blog by making a commitment to the SAP enterprise mobility community to quickly change these customer perceptions by creating a suite of “consumer app like” pre-packaged SAP mobile apps by a process/industry that can be deployed agnostic of a mobile device. I will ensure our team at Innovapptive focuses on addressing these customer concerns, so we can truly empower them with our library of SAP certified mobile apps.

I am happy to announce the below product suites, in addition to our Source to Pay app mobile apps suite. I will get back to Houston, TX and ensure our team works hard towards this goal and provide the community a roadmap and timeline for Innovapptive to deliver the below library of pre-packaged mobile apps.

• mPower Sales & Marketing ™
• mPower Finance ™
• mPower Field Services ™
• mPower HR ™
• mPower Supply Chain ™

Thank you for taking time to read through this Blog. I am confident, we can collaboratively make a difference to unwire enterprises rapidly and create a value proposition for the entire ecosystem.

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6 Top Considerations When Adopting Your Mobile Workforce Solution

Mobile workforce solutions provide a competitive advantage to enterprise companies, and in the process, redefine the way businesses manage their operations. Clients in multiple industries are using mobile solutions to be more agile and flexible, enabling their field engineers and technicians to have better access to information and respond quickly to customers’ needs.

With workflow automation and digital innovation growing in field services, mobility is EVERYWHERE. As consumers, we have become more demanding for instant go-anywhere access, and in the field or on the plant floor it’s no different. Flexibility and convenience are must-have attributes for mobile enterprise solutions.

6 points to consider helping move your company towards a truly connected mobile workforce platform:

1. Mobility is about anytime, anywhere access to information.
   • It is critical that your mobility solution makes it possible to achieve this.
2. Fresh to market platforms and solutions offering everything under the sun may sound phenomenal, but only in theory.
   • Overly-complicated systems can be challenging to use so they should be avoided, worked around or ignored altogether.
   • Select a mobile workforce solution or connected workforce platform that is easy to use.
3. Mobile solutions should be agile.
   • With new technologies appearing daily, keeping up to speed with changes is essential for enterprise companies.
4. Time is money, as the saying goes.
   • Being able to deliver faster ROI is critical for mobility solutions. Implementations should be quick and straightforward, allowing users to maintain productivity.
   • Lengthy deployments defeat the objectives of improving the speed of processes which connected workforce platforms offer.
5. Ease of integration is an essential requirement. You don’t need to rework your whole plant maintenance solution.
   • With Innovapptive’s Connected Workforce Platform™ and RACE™ (Rapid App Configurator Engine)technology, you can achieve out-of-the-box integrations with SAP Plant Maintenance, geospatial systems and more that meet your unique business requirements.
6. The key to mobility solutions is “Mobile.”
   • It is critical for your chosen mobile workforce solution to work across a variety of digital devices (phones, tablets, handhelds, etc.) and different operating systems as well.

Innovapptive’s Connected Workforce Platform answers all the requirements, easily. Our platform helps asset-intensive organizations better connect executives, the back office, field technicians, plant operators, warehouse operators, and maintenance planners, to maximize revenues and profitability. Combining field-ready business applications that are device agnostic, with the power of no-code configuration tools in RACE™, we provide a system of engagement that connects various ERP or enterprise back-end systems.

Join Innovapptive in Booth 1926 at Sapphire NOW May 7-9 in sunny Orlando, Florida. Our team of solution and industry experts will be available for demos and discussions on our next generationConnected Workforce Platform–which digitally connects your executives, your entire industrial workforce, and your back office to minimize plant outages and improve operational excellence.

We’ll see you there!

Digital Transformation FactTank: 5 Things To Make Your Transformation Successful

5 Things to Make Your Digital Transformation Successful

Enterprise digital transformation is no longer hype or a fairy-tale wish for organizations. While it is an ambitious undertaking and a driver of revenue, profit, and growth, companies need to transform their businesses to capture customers and grow to remain competitive in a hyper-competitive economy. Many companies around the globe are taking advantage of being early adopters of digital technology by improving operations and driving new customer value with innovations. It’s not new that digitization and data can transform the way businesses operate. In fact, the digital transformation market is predicted to reach a staggering $431.71 billion by 2021 (Zion Market Research, 2017) Digitization empowers companies to increase their revenues and keep costs under control.

#1 Identify the Actual Need

What do you REALLY need to optimize your workflows, increase your revenues, decrease downtime? Identifying your legitimate needs is paramount to the success of your digital transformation. It's not just about making your employees more tech-savvy with new technology/tools. Instead, your digital transformation also includes integrating digital tools into your organizational workflow. The objective of a digital transformation is to increase employee engagement to improve customer acquisition/services, enhance organizational performance and increase market competitiveness.

Don't just introduce or implement new technologies because everyone else is doing it. Instead, understand what challenges your employees are facing and identify the right (technology) solution to resolve their problems and improve your processes.

#2 Avoid the Traps

Rather than rush headfirst into the unknown of digital transformation, your plan for digital transformation needs to be meaningful and sustainable. The main trap companies fall into is not understanding "digital" correctly. Digital is not "here today, gone tomorrow" ideology, digital should be seen less as a "thing" and more a way of doing things. Companies mainly focus on achieving additional efficiency instead of understanding what type of new business opportunities are possible in the market now. To be successful with your transformation, you should ensure that your digital plan aligns with the company’s growth plan. Your plan should be flexible and one that can easily adapt to changes dictated by the business landscape.

Having a clear understanding of what digital means allows you to develop, and communicate, a shared vision of how it can be used to capture value for your company.

#3 Adapt

To make your digital transformation successful, you need to ensure that the new digital ways of working will create positive long-term habits for all. It is best to encourage your employees, from administration to executives, to adopt the new technologies/tools. You should ensure that everyone understands that adopting new technology is a win-win situation for all involved. Not only can new technology lead to increases in the company revenue and employee performance, but it will simplify/ease their (employees') work.

Digital transformation processes are successful as long as your employees accept and adopt a new culture with a positive mindset.

#4 Communicating the Digital Transformation to Employees

When companies decide to start their digital transformation journey, the first focus is "what" technology and "how" to implement. But you must turn to your end-users of the new technology to ensure the adoption is a "fit". Communication is Key!

It is essential to be transparent with your employees; there is nothing worse than being in the dark. Whether you have employees in hundreds or in thousands, a closed-office environment with little clarity create rumors, a sense of fear and, ultimately, employee frustration/discord. If you fail to acknowledge and answer to your employees' concerns/fears about new technology and tools, the digital transformation won't deliver your desired business outcomes. Therefore, it will be tough for your organization to succeed in your digital transformation journey.

#5 Have the right solution

The final step to ensure that your digital transformation is successful is to align with the right solution partner with the right expertise and platform for your needs. The right partner will help you to achieve your desired outcomes without wasting time, efforts and money. The right solution partner will help your workforce invest their efforts to improve your business processes and achieve:

• Data-driven decision-making
• Increased ROI of transformation activities
• Increased productivity
• Greater customer satisfaction
• Increased revenue

Innovapptive - Your Digital Transformation Solution Mobility Partner

Innovapptive is a digital solution provider of highly configurable cloud-based enterprise mobile solutions for Supply Chain, Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), and Field Service Operations. We are focused on achieving “Instant Mobilization” for enterprises undergoing digital transformation journies with our bundled SAP/ERP certified mobile solutions.

To help you with your digital transformation, Innovapptive's newest release of mInventory 7.0 is your answer for simple, reliable and productive user experience to manage remote logistics, see movements in real-time, reduce turnaround time, and increase the accuracy of your cycle counts. It helps your users manage physical inventory movement in real-time and perform physical and cycle counts quickly while achieving greater accuracy of inventory levels.

To experience Innovapptive’s inventory 7.0 for yourself, select the “Request Live Demo” button. You can also speak with an Innovapptive Solution Expert via phone at (713)275-1804 or via email at sales@innovapptive.com.

3 Digital Trends Topping 2019 in Field Workforce Management

Managing your field workforce effectively isn’t as easy it sounds. Advances in technology make it much more feasible and achievable. The evolution of Cloud computing and mobility have given rise to tools enabling your employees to collaborate, regardless of locale, producing a more evolved and engaged workforce.

As we step into 2019, here are the top 3 trends making impressive impacts on-field workforce management.

1. Improved Enterprise Asset Management with IoT

Asset Management is one of the biggest areas where the Internet of Things (IoT) has maximum utility. Field workforce needs to stay connected for managing customer requests on time. IoT makes the interaction between machines easier, without human interference, streamlining processes like reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) and preventative maintenance.

Fortunately, IoT presents many new ways of servicing customers with automation, optimization, asset performance management, and the creation of new revenue models. Field service organizations have evolved alongside IoT. Solutions equipped with IoT sensors can pinpoint problems before they become severe. Your techs can identify issues and resolve them before they happen. When a part or system isn’t working correctly, IoT sensors detect and notify the necessary departments then sensors send requests to replace or repair the faulty piece(s) of equipment before a service call is made by the customer. 

Field service organizations are heavily investing in IoT to increase growth and maximize productivity. Speculations project that over 60% of manufacturing organizations are expected to apply IoT to products over the next 5 years. They are also hoping to apply over $250 billion in IoT by 2020.  IoT Solutions enable your field workforce to access relevant information and increases connectivity within the field service operation while fostering a predictive model to address customer concerns.

2. Immersive Experience with AR and VR

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are two immersive technologies gathering speed across a multitude of industries at the end of 2018 and as 2019 kicks off.  Both have incredible potential to change the way organizations, and their users, collaborate to solve issues effectively.

In the next five years, much focus will be on mixed reality (a combination of AR and VR), where the user will able to interact with digital and real-world objects while being present in the physical world. One such industry seeing mixed reality (the combination of AR/VR) is manufacturing. The use of mixed reality in manufacturing allows companies to train new workers more efficiently, reducing time spent training by over 30% and reducing documentation time by at least 75%.

3.  No Longer a Buzzword – Mobility is a Necessity 

When a multinational tech conglomerate like Cisco projects the number of connected devices to exceed 50 billion by 2020, organizations listen.

Businesses are adopting mobile solutions to simplify and streamline operations - making them more effective and less cumbersome. Organizations without mobile-first strategies will be left behind their competitors. Today, organizations need real-time insight into the daily activities of the office and field, creating more accurate projections and planning in operations and, inevitably, achieving goals.

Infield workforce management, mobility is more than just managing your workers’ schedules with mobile devices. In addition, mobility empowers your field workforce to access the right information at the right time in the right context. Mobility helps field service organizations resolve issues faster, maximize employee productivity, and improve customer service.

Answering Technology Trends

With adoptions of new technologies like IoT, mixed reality, and mobility, Customer behaviors are shifting. They are expecting to be met on their “turf”, rather than the customer come to you. To meet the demands of such transitions to technologies like virtual meetings (in lieu of face to face) and mobile workstations rather desktops, Innovapptive is empowering enterprises to consume digital technologies in a few clicks. With a business solution framework that accelerates your time to market (responsive to the customer ), value, and reduces your total cost of ownership.

Innovapptive’s mobile EAM platform, mWorkOrder with RACE™, is the most configurable enterprise-grade SAP Plant Maintenance solution on the market. With mWorkOrder , you have the power to improve capital asset management in ways that increase reliability, enhance predictive maintenance, ensure regulatory compliance, reduce energy usage, and support sustainability initiatives.

Learn how Australia’s largest utility company utilizes Innovapptive’s mWorkOrder with RACE™ to optimize their maintenance planning, improve asset reliability, and save field workers time as they work on the go with real-time updates. Read their story here: https://bit.ly/2LWQXNQ

Lifting the Limits: Improving Your Workforce’s Wrench Time

 

Wrench time…Can it be improved?

Workforce efficiency in maintenance has a profound effect on the maintenance group’s costs and overall performance in any industry. It is safe to say, wrench time affects efficiency costs thus the overall costs for all organizations Can it be improved?
Research shows that maintenance workforce efficiencies can range from 18% – 74%, with inefficient operations being on the higher end of the spectrum of labor spend. Surveys estimate that the average wrench time within an efficient, or reactive, maintenance environment hovering around 30-35%. Breaking this down further: in an 8-hour day, there are only 2½ hours of actual hands-on wrench time or productive, or value-added, work.
A number of situations can impact wrench time of technician, such as

• Failure to have the right asset(s)/equipment available for the assigned technician(s) – due to the lack of visibility
• With limited visibility, maintenance technicians are not able to plan for their routes and carry parts/tools they need for maintenance/repairs.
• Repeated travel back and forth from worksite to the office/storeroom to collect parts, manuals, and assistance is time-consuming.  
• An issue reported to maintenance is wrong, due to various reasons such as ineffective paper-based processes, resulting in the wrong technician being dispatched to a job.  
• Unavailability of an asset’s maintenance history, equipment drawings, and details or service manuals for reference to conduct repairs.
• and more…

The cost of non-wrench time (5½ hours) leaves a great financial impact on the organization. That said, non-wrench activities are still necessary to get work done but are not considered factors in true wrench time.
For improving wrench time, it is essential for your organization to identify and eliminate barriers preventing your maintenance technicians from doing their jobs efficiently. One of the most effective ways to improve your technicians’ wrench time – streamline your organization’s planning and scheduling work order processes and improve strategies for preventive/proactive maintenance. Effective planning/scheduling processes help ensure that plant maintenance work is well planned, aiding in work orders being completed according to priorities.
To be more productive at work, your workforce needs to have the right information, such as asset details, along with maintenance history, real-time availability of maintenance parts/tools, and guiding instructions available in their hands. This increases your maintenance of the workforce’s productivity and reduces delays during jobs, thus increasing your bottom line.
Because of the mobile nature of the maintenance workforce, it is vital to equip your maintenance workforce with the right mobile workforce management solution. The “right” solution offers all the field-ready functionality necessary and connects their mobile workforce with your back office and other departments. Doing the right work, at the right time, with the right information and materials, in the right way will improve your technicians’ wrench time.

Improving Wrench time with Mobile Plant Maintenance

The solution mWorkOrder – Mobile Plant Maintenance, offered by Innovapptive within the next generation Connected Workforce  The platform, provides your maintenance technicians/workers anytime, anywhere access to the right information they need to do their jobs. mWorkOrder enables your workers to work safer, smarter and more productively. mWorkOrder‘s on-demand and role-based barcode scanning features allow field technicians, supervisors, planners to automate searching for parts, equipment, and history of equipment to maximize your wrench time.
Using mWorkOrder, planners/schedulers can create, update and view maintenance plans in real-time, and see where assets are located, accordingly. They can then assign work orders to technicians nearby. Also, supervisors are able to track performance and the start/stop times of technicians with the online/offline capabilities offered within mWorkOrder.
With the right information, your maintenance technicians’ productivity will increase – more completed work orders in a day result in improved wrench time. Having access to the right information along with the material, equipment and exactly what tools they need for the job, will enable maintenance technicians to focus on their actual work, and complete work orders in their first visit.

Learn how Australia’s largest utility company utilizes Innovapptive’s mWorkOrder with RACE™ to optimize their maintenance planning, improve asset reliability, and save field workers time as they work on the go with real-time updates. Read their story here: https://bit.ly/2LWQXNQ