Enterprise Mobility – Transforming Supply Chain

Potential Suppliers and Distributors for Companies - effective and efficient Supply Chain can help 
identify them!

Sustainable Supply Chain of a company manages the feat of matching its supply volume to customer demand impacting company’s profitability. To keep up to the customer requirement, companies continuously implement techniques to optimize inventory and synchronize the supply network.  An efficiently managed Supply Chain’s impact can be totally felt in the Inbound Logistics as it helps identifying potential Suppliers and Distributors; evaluating how accessible / effective they are, establishing relationships and signing contracts with the companies who offer the best combination of price and service. Looking into the benefits of an efficient Supply Chain, every company tries to ensure optimal functioning of the supply chain.

 

The shift from Traditional practices to Operational Excellence

Bringing out operational excellence in managing an efficient supply chain that impacts Inbound Logistics in a business faces many real time challnges.  The environment is definetely ruled by uncertainty, volatility, complexity, and ambiguity.  For instance, the inaccuracy due to delay in updating goods received and dispatched in Inventory creates uncertain and inaccurate reports of current inventory levels.  The manual proceses used by quality managers, inspectors and operators experience tremendous loss of productivity due to redundant data entry and image caputuring processes.  Delay in approvals of Purchase Orders and Purchase Releases, processing of Production Orders creates hindrances in manufacturing units and sales processes, leading to complex Supply Chains.  To meet the challenges, manufacturers today are adopting to an entirely new way of coordinating and synchronizing the Supply Chain network.

Emerging Technology and Company Operations 

Transforming Supply Chain with new practices has become a business trend with the globalization that has dramatically impacted the way companies do business.  Customers use fast paced technologies like internet and smart phones to keep themselves well-connected and well informed.  Leveraging this, companies tend to adopt & adapt smart techologies like ERP & Mobility solutions to match the pace.  Enterprise Mobility Apps  as blessing in disguise today help Supply Chain employees who work most of the time remotely, face the challenge of updating the back-end being away from their desktops, spending significant time intransit.  It is also very helpful in Ware Houses with Inventory Managers who face the challenge in updating the SAP system with a frequent in and out movement of material receiving, stocking, and dispatching.

Unlike many Players, Innovapptive is a leading SAP Certified Enterprise Mobility Solutions /Services Provider with 50+ Award Winning Pre-packaged Apps on the SAP Store helping Global 2000 Companies in inprovising their Processes / Operations, enhancing Workforce Productivity  and counting great Cost Savings.  Innovapptive’s Product Suite for Supply Chain includes Apps for Inventory, PO and PR Release, Quality Management, Production Orders, Procurement and Goods Confirm.

Load Arguments & Personalization Keys in SUP

Load Arguments in SUP :

Load Arguments control the amount of data sent to SUP Server Cache DB. Each load argument creates its own partition in the Cache DB on the SUP Server based on the load argument key value which we can set through personalization keys or through synchronization parameters. Partitions are refreshed concurrently so there will be no chance of data inconsistency. In SUP we can create multiple cache groups(i.e. On-Demand, Scheduling) and can assign different cache policies for particular Mobile Business Objects so partition in the Cache DB will be refreshed as per the policies. There is a possibility to set default value for the Load Arguments or we can pass the value through dynamic queries from the client code. In a nutshell you can consider the load arguments like as “where” clause of SQL Query and results data will be sent to the SUP Server Cache DB.

Load Argument Filtering

Personalization Keys in SUP :

Personalization Keys allow to set(personalize) load arguments or synchronization parameters value from the client code(i.e. mobile user). Multiple personalization keys can be created in the mobile application project and we can set the data type and storage for the individual keys. As per the data type personalization keys will accept the values from the client and data storage for the key value can be server,client or transient.

Mobile development supports two types of personalization keys:
User-defined : You can create multiple keys while developing Mobile Business Objects and can set the key values from the client code.
System-defined : System defined keys refer to the user’s login credentials which are used to access enterprise information system (EIS) data.

Steps to create Personalization Keys :

a) Navigate to your mobile application project in the Unwired Workspace
b) Right click on Personalization Keys in Workspace Navigator
c) Select New > Personalization Key
d) Set Name and Type for the Personalization Key and then click finish.

How to map Personalization Keys to the Load Arguments ?

a) Select MBO Attribute from the Mobile Application Diagram Editor
b) Right click > Select Show Properties View
c) Select Attributes Tab > Load Arguments Tab
d) Apply Personalization Key for the Load Arguments in the key column

How to set the Personalization Keys values ?

Personalization Keys values we can set from the mobile application code. Cache DB on the SUP Server and device will be refreshed automatically once we do synchronization. Business logic (i.e. Generated code) will add getter and setter methods in PersonalizationParameters class and we can set the values to these methods from the controller.

How are the Personalization Keys useful for the client side performance ?

Load Arguments and Synchronization parameters values can be set by personalization keys from the client code.
Load Arguments limit the amount of data (i.e. no of records) filtered between the SUP Server Cache DB and EIS. Synchronization parameters limit the amount of data filtered between Server Cache DB and Mobile DB. Therefore selected records will be refreshed in Mobile DB and this results in better performance.

Transforming Oil and Gas Industry with an SAP Mobile Goods Receipt and Service Entry Sheet Solution

Oil and Gas Industry Situation

Product/Service Line and Field Personnel in the Oil and Gas Industry are situationally away from desktops and do not have the ability to complete a goods receipt or a service entry sheet in a timely manner. More often than not, this creates invoice exception situations, causing GR/IR resolution, delayed payments and penalties. A mobile solution tightly integrated with SAP to perform real time goods receipts or service entry sheet can drastically automate your procure to pay processes, increase productivity and reduce your total cost of ownership. (TCO)

Industry Goods Receiving Business Paint Points

• Untimely goods receipt or service entry sheet, creating invoice exception situations
• Delay in supplier payments
• Increased penalties and supplier inquiries
• Manual entry of several unplanned service lines with price not known till invoice receipt
• Missing pro-active notification on a mobile device to drive goods receipt and service entry sheet processing with a few clicks

Innovapptive’s Mobile Goods Receipt and Service Entry Sheet Solution can drastically transform your procure to pay processes

• Search for open or partial purchase orders to perform a goods receipt or a service entry sheet
• Configurable search criteria based on desktop vs. central receiving
• Mobile OCR to capture unplanned service lines from a delivery ticket at the time of service completion
• Bar code read capability to support receiving of inventory and transfer order posting into Warehouse Management
• Pro-active push notification of invoice exceptions to post a goods receipt or a service entry sheet with a  few clicks

Mobile Goods Receipt and Service Entry Sheet Value Proposition

• Reduce 20-25% of Invoice exception situations
• Improve supplier relationships and timely payments
• Reduce error processing of GR/IR resolutions
• Availability of accurate and timely inventory and financial information
• Improve overall service procurement
• Increased efficiency of warehouse, plant, field and accounts payable personnel
• Increased productivity of field and accounts payable personnel
• Process automation of both goods and service receiving, including planned and unplanned services PO.

Innovapptive featured in the Enterprise Mobility – Global Strategic Business Report

We are happy to announce that Innovapptive Inc. was featured in Global Industry Analyst, Inc.’s report on “Enterprise Mobility – Global Strategic Business Report” published in september 2013. This distinguised recognition fromindependent analysts is a true testament of Innovapptive Inc. quickly emerging as a dominant leading enterprise mobility products and service provider.

The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2010 through 2018. Also, a six-year historic analysis is provided for these markets.

This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Enterprise Mobility in US$ Million by the following Segments:

• Applications
• Software
• Hardware
• Mobile Voice
• Mobile Data
• Others.

The report profiles 135 companies including many key and niche players such as:

• AT&T Inc.
• BlackBerry Limited
• Cerner Corporation
• Citrix Systems, Inc.
• Enterprise Mobility Inc.
• Good Technology, Inc.
• Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P
• Innovapptive Inc
• International Business Machines Corporation
• iPass, Inc.
• McKesson Corporation
• Motion Computing, Inc.
• Motorola Solutions Inc.
• Nokia Corporation
• Notify Technology Corporation
• Panasonic Corporation
• SAP AG
• Verizon Business.

Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are primarily based on public domain information including company URLs. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2010 through 2018. Also, a six-year historic analysis is provided for these markets.

You can download a copy of this report by clicking on the link.

Innovapptive Finishes Runners Up In Retail and Logisitics SAP Mobile App Challenge 2013

The week of October 21st – 25th, at SAP TechEd 2013, Las Vegas, marked another milestone for Innovapptive. We are excited to announce that Innovapptive finished as runners up in two categories of the SAP mobile app challenge 2013 and received a memento and cash prize of 2,500 euros for each category from Bernd Uwe-Pagel, Senior Vice President, Platform Ecosystem & E-Channels, SAP AG

The Innovapptive leadership team attended SAP Tech Ed 2013 to present our SAP Certified Mobile apps in two separate categories:

Retail SAP Mobile App Challenge 2013

Mobile Universal Approvals

Innovapptive mWorklist 2.0 app has enhanced personalized features such as a configurable dashboards, collective approvals, substitution and being able to toggle between the manager and delegates inbox.The mWorklist 2.0 mobile app provides enterprises a universal and unified view of all their SAP and Non-SAP Mobile approvals to streamline approvals of their purchase requisitions, purchase orders, contracts, invoices, service entry sheets, vendor master and WBS elements. Additionally, they can streamline their accounts payable processes, by using the same mobile app. The mobile app provides the ability to receive blocked invoice push notification and prompt a proactive creation of a goods receipt with a few clicks.

Logistics and Transportation Mobile App Challenge 2013

Mobile Asset Tagging

The mAssetTag – Mobile Asset Tagging and Geocoding app provides a simple and cost-effective solution to keep track of their huge inventory of assets that frequently moved between several field personnel and customer locations. Innovapptive’s mAssetTag solution not only tracks inventory for based on barcode scanning, but also provides a real-time listing of the exact location of assets, which simplifies the logistics involved in moving the assets to multiple locations.

The ultimate winners and runners up were selected in a live customer voting session in the SAP Mobile Platform Launch Party.

Watch the Video where Bernd Uwe-Pagel, Senior Vice President, Platform Ecosystem & E-Channels, SAP AG introduce Innovapptive as a finalist in two categories to the live customer voting panel.

The finalists for both categories were selected by a jury panel consisting of industry experts, independent analysts, bloggers and SAP SME’s. Both the app utilizes SAP’s industry leading mobile platform (Sybase unwired platform 2.2) to seamlessly integrate into an SAP landscape. The mobile universal approvals app streamlines managerial approvals and the mobile asset tagging app helps your enterprise better track and manage your asset movements and assists in simple physical inventory reconciliation.