Talk about disruption!  An anti-Uber taxi protest in London, June 11, 2014.  Photo by David Holt, CC license.

Does anyone think Uber would exist without mobile computing?

You might think of mobile as providing convenience, which it does, but there are deeper and more significant advantages of having mobile as an asset in parts of your business.

The most lucrative uses of mobile are in the selling channels.

Mobile versions of online ordering sites.  This capability increases the surface area of your selling space; the consumer is exposed a higher percentage of time to your products and services and the opportunity to buy them.

Being able to find your web site on a smartphone is not the same thing; at the very least your site has to be “responsive,” so that the online version scales down in proportion to a mobile device.  Otherwise your site looks terrible on a smartphone and is nearly impossible to use.  For more effective results, have a mobile app built and connected to your back office systems.  Vendors in this area range from thousands of independent programmers to companies who build mobile apps and network them to your systems, such as Mashery, Sourcebits, and DMI, and full-service B2C providers such as CapGemini, Infor, Accenture, and Deloitte.

Close-the-sale documents in mobile form.  When buyers decide to buy can be uncertain; a sales call can be a propitious moment.  Waiting for the necessary forms and signatures risks losing the sale in the interim.  Document-signing has moved to electronic form (DocuSign, eSignLive, and ElectronicSignature.com), opening opportunities to conclude in mobile form all kinds of commercial transactions.

Sales rep access to company sales order and other systems, for order placement, product demonstration, or sharing of data and insights.  In-store stock replenishment has been done for many years by companies that distribute directly to retail stores via route drivers. But these systems were/are usually expensive and custom-built, with very narrow single-purpose capabilities.  The smartphone and its digital network changed all of that.  Don’t under-estimate the value of sales people with tablets who can share upcoming marketing plans and data confirming promotional lifts in sales from prior events.  For more on this, peruse this link, which discusses a wide range of mobile applications for use in sales.

Point-of-delivery generation of invoice, credit, and debit transactions.  In many businesses, point-of-delivery processes are extremely inefficient.  Delivery discrepancies are hand-written on paper copies of receiving documents, which are then sent to offices where the data is entered into a system.  The delivery data flows back to the shipper, and is investigated by back office people.  Inventory and customer accounts are adjusted for the discrepancies.  The customer’s payment — which differs from the invoice — is received, and short-pay amounts are assigned to special accounts.  Good automated point-of-delivery solutions can usually be found from transportation or logistics management software providers, such as JDA, LeanLogistics, Logility, Infor, or TecSys.

For more on mobile app usage, check these out:

The Mobile App Development Playbook for 2015, Forrester Research

7 Ways Mobile Apps Are Driving Revenue for Businesses

How Businesses Are Using Mobile Apps – 2015 Canvas Survey Results

Photo by Blake Patterson, CC license.

See those app icons on your iPhone? Don’t you think it makes sense to put corporate apps on an iPhone too? Yes, as long as the interface is easy and you don’t have to type a lot on your tiny glass screen. Enterprise apps are going there, and that means the desktop/laptop is moving into the palm of your hand.

This is a good thing, and it’s not just about convenience. There are sales to be made. Employees in customer- and partner-facing roles want the superior capabilities of Apple or Android products to enhance their selling stories or engage on a different and more dynamic level with customers, partners, banks, and the general public. Seeing is believing, and only mobile computing brings that to the field in an effective way.

To capitalize on mobile, you need software on the device and a way for the device to reach your enterprise systems. The apps that check you in for your flight are programs made to run on an iOS or Android device, which then connect over the digital network to an interface mechanism that is the connection to the airline’s main reservation system.  It is not difficult for your enterprise to do the same; there are many firms that can build apps and also provide the integration to your ERP systems.

But most of the mobile-platform software needed will be custom.  Enterprise software vendors are starting to offer mobile versions for small parts of their entire system solution. SAP says its Retail Execution mobile app works with its enterprise customer relationship management software to provide “anywhere, anytime access to data from mobile devices….”

Oracle offers Business Approval for Managers, a Smartphone app to approve expenses, purchase orders and other pending transactions.

Mobile also offers the promise of a totally new interaction with your ERP system. Out of the box, basic transactions – like determining quantities of raw materials required and placing a purchase order for those quantities – is a multiple-screen, multiple data entry affair for the leading ERP systems.

As your business grows or becomes more complex, you need good ERP system jockeys, and more of them. But a mobile app is the perfect consolidator of unnecessary steps. A PO creation in your ERP system that is three screens and eight fields of data entry could be simplified to four taps on two screens.

I believe that many enterprises have or will eventually realize that a large part of their work force is devoted to feeding systems like Oracle and ERP the data those systems need to create transactions, reports, and messages needed to keep the business running.  And many times that data has to be created in Excel or other systems, in order to give the classic ERP system the pristine data it needs. This is a gross misuse of talent, and can only go on so long.

I have seen smart young SAP users figure out how to automate the in-feeds needed for everyday transactions.  They are resourcing what they know to make their life simpler, and much of what they do is exactly what mobile apps do — consolidate steps in a transaction.

The mobile app is the model — simplicity and intuition — that big ERP vendors need to invest in.