SAP Technology News

Autonomously going ahead – Keep your employees independent with Mobility

Employee Self-Service (ESS), as it relates to Enterprise Workforce Management, is the ability for employees to access their personal corporate HR data and also to proactively attain access to certain key details about their employment. At its most basic, it’s normally hosted on a company intranet and accessed over the web, the staff doesn’t require to be at their desks to use it. They can log in from the likes of their home or anywhere else with an internet connection. When they first emerged, these systems didn’t allow people to do much more than change a line of address or amend bank details. These days, thanks to more robust data encryption, employees can apply for leave, look at policies, share information, book training or download pay slips. And all without involving HR.shutterstock_325113914
ESS is an increasingly prevalent trend in Human Resources Management that allows an employee to handle many job relates tasks such as applications for reimbursement, updates to personal information and access to company information, which otherwise would have been in the custody of the management or the administrative staff. ESS software is available as a stand-alone product or as a component of some larger application, such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) product.
Focus on contributing to business goals
Eliminate unnecessary maintenance, deployment time, and cost
Successful Human Resources Management starts with securing sensitive information and empowering employees with self-service so you can focus more on your organization’s strategic initiatives. ESS processes increase employee’s productivity and simultaneously save costs. Allowing access to the employees online, companies can manage HR data remotely via internet, eliminating paperwork and unnecessary phone calls, while drastically reducing costs.
Growing numbers of companies are adopting employee self-service applications that reduce human resources paperwork and workload. This enables human resources staff to focus more on strategy and planning. In the small business realm, where owners and certain key employees wear multiple hats, shifting certain functions to workers through self-service applications can enable these key individuals to devote more of their energies to the company’s core business. The potential advantages of adopting employee self-service are wide ranging.
  • Reduced paperwork for human resources departments, benefit administrators and employees.
  • Fewer mundane, clerical-type tasks for human resources benefits staffers, both management and administrative, which frees them up for planning, strategy, communications development, etc.
  • Potential for reducing administrative staff headcount.
  • Increased transaction accuracy, due to reduced paperwork and the ability of self-service systems to recognize and catch certain types of data entry errors.
  • Possibility of employee education and communications, by directing employees to definitions of terms, overviews of plan provisions, and associated learning resources.
  • Opportunity for employee engagement.
Stay ahead -Empower Self Service HR
Change can be hard. But it’s worth it. Do it right and the results should be to achieve an end-to-end interoperable, streamlined workflow; integrated processes and capabilities across all HR activities on one platform. In other words, employees can get to what they want faster and HR can forget workarounds between incompatible systems and focus on what it should be doing, adding strategic value.
Companies need Talent Management and HR systems that are strong enough to meet their workforce needs today, but innovative and flexible enough to adapt as their business evolves and grows. With global competition and market pressure escalating, it’s more important than ever to have modern human capital solutions that are up to the challenge. Self-service helps HR do more with less, and means that they can concentrate on doing more important work such as focusing more on talent strategy to hire and retain employees. This reduces HR operating costs and help move the department from a cost centre to profit centre.
The future is mobile
Today, mobile apps range from the mawkish to the highly functional phenomenon and they’re having a very real impact on the face of human resources and employee self-service. ESS mobile apps are available for every level of employee, from your human resource officers to basic employees, and they provide a wide range of different benefits and uses. Using an ESS mobile app unlocks a world of different possibilities for your business and your employees and provides you with a lot of benefits.
  • ESS mobile apps allow employees to clock in and out of work from their smart phones and feature GPS functionality to ensure honesty.
  • It allows workers to monitor their own salary and payroll information without bothering the human resources department.
  • Employees can use the app to submit leave requests to the HR department and to receive responses. They can also review their history of leave and attendance information.
  • Employee benefits can be self-managed through the use of these apps.
    Employees of larger companies can access the employee directory through these apps and find the person they need to locate quickly.
  • Managers may even be able to use these mobile apps to view applicant data and review applications.
During the journey of Digital Transformation. What gives is higher productivity, better profits, lower costs and most of all employee satisfaction. It really is possible to save money and improve delivery by pushing transactional HR into a self-service environment, but when starting down that road, ensure you give yourself enough time to plan, that your technology integrates seamlessly, and that your implementation team has the complex skills it needs to do the job.
Improve employee satisfaction
Go mobile in less than 4 weeks with mEmployee
Innovapptive’s SAP certified mobile Employee Self-Service app (mEmployee) offers the freedom of consolidating all HR related apps on the store into one single unified SAP HR ESS mobile app. This app creates a single and a secure mobile repository for confidential HR information and processes. It provides an easy-to-navigate environment that is accessible by all employees, regardless of where they are located, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Mobile app’s access rights for each employee are established by HR and can be configured based on employee’s position in the company’s organizational hierarchy, department, and key job functions.
Leverage mEmployee mobile app for “Success Factors” to ensure an intuitive HR experience to your employees, while providing them access to critical HR data to help them process a series of transactions, anywhere, anytime. The mobile solution for SAP’s Success Factors (SFSF) HCM suite is aimed to redefine HR success and enhance the overall productivity of the employees that is critical in today’s competitive world. mEmployee’s integration with SAP’s SFSF takes the HR experience to the next level, offering the best of both worlds, it provides truly device and platform agnostic functionality, full native support on all major mobile OS and browser access through SAP Fiori Launchpad, at no additional cost. It offers cross-company employee project collaboration, ensuring seamless communication mechanism across different stakeholders including employees, managers and experts. It also enables employees to collaborate around relevant business content, thereby increasing productivity by helping them stay connected with people, even when they are away from the office. It provides secure access to your data anytime, anywhere. SFSF leverages industry standard authentication, data transport protocols and encryption.
Synchronous updates based on OData technology, minimized Offline dependency and conflict resolution
Innovapptive’s mobile ESS 1.0 offers the following key features and value drivers for your organization’s employees:

Key Features

Value Drivers

  • Update their individual profiles.
  • Reduced HR headcount to support employees
  • Search other employees, email and call them.
  • Reduced phone calls and inquiries
  • Enter their time sheets or leave requests.
  • Improved employee satisfaction and talent retention
  • Review their learning, payroll and talent profile, anywhere, anytime.
  • Improved employee productivity
  • Create and save expense reports
  • Review their eligible benefits.
Our Mobile Portfolio, Rapid App Configurator Engine (RACE) powered by the SAP HANA Cloud Platform with embedded licenses allows our customers to accelerate and execute their SAP Enterprise mobile strategy, while benefiting from a compelling ROI. Innovapptive’s mEmployee solution comes built-in with our configuration toolkit RACE that empowers your IT teams to achieve infinite number of customizations of the mobile apps within minutes, translating to 40% of operational efficiency. It offers high level agility and flexibility that helps in accelerating your enterprise’s time to market without becoming a bottleneck. The simplicity in customizing SAP mobile solutions provides a strong value proposition and dramatically improves the overall TCO and ROI, thereby enhancing the overall customer experience to the next level.Our Unique Value Proposition – RACE ™
Finishing with these advantages, that truly are materializing for organizations using employee self-service tools. The use of employee self-service has had an appreciable impact on human resource service delivery and a tangible return on the investment in applications and technology. As more aspects of everyday life turn to self-service, we’ve grown accustomed to doing tasks for ourselves. Workers, therefore, are accepting, even welcoming, the ability to control numerous benefits tasks that previously were done by others. Seeing that this move has efficiency and financial advantages for business, it’s likely that employee self-service applications will continue to grow.
If you would like a demo of Innovapptive’s mEmployee(Mobile Employee Self Service) solution, 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.


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.

Share this post


6 Top Considerations When Adopting Your Mobile Workforce Solution

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.
Speak with an Innovapptive Solutions Expert
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


 
Return to top of pageCopyright ©SAP Mobility 2019 | Template design by Privacy Policy|Disclaimer*All trademarks and copyrights remain the property of their respective owners.