SAP Enterprise Mobility and the Fog of War

[Former Member]

The term of "Fog of War" means "The uncertainty in situation awareness experienced during operations."  It is really hard to manage operations efficiently if you don't know where your people and resources are located.  How can you implement your strategy or fulfill your mission without location knowledge?  Gaining situational awareness is the key to improving productivity in the field.

In the preliminary results of my 2012 mid-year enterprise mobility survey, the participants have identified "improved productivity" as the #1 ROI that companies are seeking from enterprise mobility.  This would suggest a need for GPS tracking of your workforce, assets and resources and improved situational awareness.

I recently read that 90% of the challenges that military commanders have are finding the enemy, and finding their own forces.  Knowing the location of your resources enables you to make all kinds of data driven decisions such as:

• Estimated arrival times
• Determining what resources are closest to a job site
• Optimizing routes
• Optimizing schedules
• Identifying the nearest location of materials, supplies and other resources
• etc.

Although it is impossible to eliminate all fog in the real world, best in class services organizations are going to invest in the elimination of as much of it as possible.  This takes not only knowing their real-time GPS coordinates of your workforce and resources at all times, but having an enterprise mobility solution and real-time analytics and forecasting applications that understand how to use this data to optimize your productivity.