Appcelerator Mobile Cloud Services

What if you could build out your next generation mobile cloud at a fraction of the time and cost,using the development resources you already have, with lower risk, that can reliably scale with your user adoption?

Appcelerator Cloud Service(ACS) is a cloud based service that offers a fast and easy way to build connected mobile applications. Just like SaaS offerings provide ready-to-use applications over the cloud without installing any software, ACS o!ers ready-to-use services that can be consumed by the mobile apps in a similar manner. ACS also shields you from managing server hardware and storage or dealing with virtualization and networking.

ACS also provides numerous other benefits:

1. Library of pre-built, commonly used services

These proven, robust services provide commonly used mobile application services which reduce both integration time and risk, while enabling you to build your next generation apps.

Popular services include:

-User Management – which allows the application to create usernames and passwords, authenticate users on login and manage sessions

-Push Notifications – which enables the delivery of popups and messages to different users

-Check-Ins and Status Updates – which allows users to associate a time and place with information such as a photo or comment

-Photos – which enables the uploading of photos and the automatically resized delivery to devices

-Custom Objects – which facilitates the creation and management of your own custom objects (e.g product, SKU, car, etc.) along with attributes which can be stored and queried

-Social integration – which helps you connect your users with popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

-Access Control – which provides fine-grained control over which app users can read and write data stored in the cloud.

2. Client-side APIs for any development platform

All API services are exposed (and fully documented) via a REST API and SDKs for iOS, Android, and JavaScript, making the invocation quick and easy from the client-side, regardless of the underlying mobile platforms. This allows organizations to take advantage of the more pervasive skill sets of web and native application developers rather than the less common and more expensive server-side developers.Although you can use ACS with any mobile development platform, you can realize significant benefits by using Titanium Studio, including:

-Richer application functionality due to the 5,000 APIs and Marketplace modules.

-Increased productivity due to a single environment for both client development and

backend services.

-Reduced cost of development by leveraging common JavaScript skills.

-Reduced training and support costs.

3. Extensibility, to build your own custom services for all your mobile apps

There will likely be instances where you need your own custom services, for example to access your internal corporate enterprise systems and data sources. ACS provides you with the ability to easily create these services. Once created, they act like any of the pre-built services and are consumed in exactly the same way as detailed above.Tailored extensions can be built that are industry specific (e.g., telco, finance, insurance, government, travel) or technology specific (e.g. security, ERP/CRM).Since these capabilities are enabled via Node.js,development of the services is done using JavaScript, one of the world’s most popular programming languages. Using Titanium Studio therefore provides users with a unified mobile development environment for both the client side apps as well as the backend cloud services, which o!ers significant benefits regardingproductivity, skillset re-use and training time.

4. Elastic scale to support user adoption

ACS automatically distributes the load from the mobile application tra”c to ensure a highly elastic environment. As your user adoption grows the back-end will transparently ensure the right amount of resource are allocated.

5. Flexible delivery models

ACS can be consumed in a variety of ways depending on your organization’s desired level of security and control.

-ACS Public Cloud: The back-end is hosted and managed by Appcelerator in the cloud

-ACS Virtual Private Cloud: The back-end is hosted and managed by Appcelerator in the cloud, but with dedicated infrastructure and VPN access for increased security and control

-ACS Private Cloud: The back-end is hosted and managed on your premises or data center, for maximum control and access to local data sources.

Enterprise Mobility: Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry

Massive Urbanization and Expanding Market place – Wide scope for Cement Industry

The massive urbanization in  the countries across the globe, particularly the densely populated countries has increased the scope for cement companies enormously. CW Research says there is an expanding demand between 3.5 and 4 percent per year for the coming years, expanding from 3.99 billion tons in 2013 to 4.78 billion tons in 2018. Meeting the demand with and efficient supply chain cement companies search innovating and adopting new technologies. As modern Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry create agile business procedures and improved dealer network accelerate sales and help meeting supply-demand in an expanding market place.

Identifying the challenges field employees face  

With the growing demand, companies face the challenge of Inventories rapidly moving in and out of the company.  Tracking inventory data is overwhelming with traditional methods, what follows is inaccurate inventory records, shipments and customer service issues.  Quality inspectors, managers and operators are challenged with manual processes to capture accurate inspection lot quality issues.  Field employees such as engineering and construction or sales reps face delay in Purchase Order and Purchase Release approvals due to slow manual processes. Fast technology advancement is now questioning traditional techniques in the cement industries.  Adopting to  new Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry that can bring operational excellence in business processes can help in addressing the situation.

ERP software solutions provide integrated businesses solutions. SAP is a neatly integrated ERP software, providing industry specific solutions for different industries with easy integration among all the departments. SAP solutions are most preferred as it provides solutions for large, mid-sized and small companies world-wide. It is most popular and flexible ERP solutions, which is 25% of the ERP solutions used by the companies world wide.

Does it make a difference Implementing Enterprise Mobility in the Cement Industry ?

Enterprise Mobility in today’s world has changed the dynamics of customer relationships. People today are digitally connected and informed through social media. Going mobile is a must for enterprises to provide improved services. Empowering employees with mobility enables them to update information from anywhere. Implementing Enterprise Mobility’s latest Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry improves dealer network.  Enabling access to accurate information to sales teams using Mobility helps them to answer customer queries, avoids down-time and increases customer satisfaction.   And it is not overwhelming that, the report via visage says the global enterprise mobility market will take in $140 billion a year by 2020.  As instant mobilization makes it possible with a range of Pre-packages apps available, ready to run within weeks.

Innovapptive provides enterprises with Pre-packaged apps in Line-of-businesses helping them consume & process information and change the way they conduct business.

According to leading industry analysts 50% of business applications will be accessed through mobile within two years, The reason is the way enterprise mobility apps function  to increase employee productivity, improve competitive advantage, enhance decision making making every organization to leverage the phenomenon.

Few of our apps which can transform business procedures and bring value are:

mQuality:  The Mobile Quality Management solution is an SAP® certified, a winning app of 2014 SAP Partner Edge Application Development for Mobile Challenge . The solution transforms manufacturing companies’ quality control and assurance process by being able to capture an SAP Quality Notification, along with images and GPS information – anywhere, anytime.

mInventory  - Extend your inventory management system into the field to increase availability and avoid downtime

mAssetTag – Using bar code scanning and RFID technologies mAssetTap helps managing   assets, tracking their location to ensure assets are not missing or stolen, and ensures upgrades and system deployments run effectively.

mWorklist -  mWorklist is a one stop solution for managers to approve all their work items from anywhere anytime. Instead of using one app per approval, mWorklist contains 16 out-of-the-box role based configurable SAP approvals.

 mRelease -   The PO or PR release (mRelease) helps in controlling budgets, to avoid unnecessary spend and provide optimization of stock levels.

mWorkOrder - Using this app field technicians can receive new work orders, push notifications and priorities in real time. It helps in avoiding any potential equipment failure, unexpected downtime, safety and environmental risks.

mSales Execution - The native mobile application enhances productivity of the sales rep, by providing critical insights into retail execution and increases revenue.

mShop - mShop mobile solution empowers field workforce to raise and manage their requisitions from anywhere, anytime.

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.