To continue with the earlier thought of my previous blog - what really excites me about SAP Retail is that now I find it Social, and Trendy. Over the last decade consumer or user has seen many changes in the Era of Personal Computing! Today Mobility has become the key trend. PCs are getting replaced by Tablets and large software applications are beginning a shift to smaller versions – Apps ! This aspect is very well aligned with the economic conditions too - Technology Investments and Budgets are getting smaller and Retailers are looking towards small applications with faster Win / smaller TOC (Total Cost of Ownership).
What this translates into for Retailers : -
- Applications based on Mobility are aimed to be faster to deploy and easier to Manage.
- Easy to Use - User Experience and response becomes great!
- Quick Results from productivity point of view.
- Faster work around to Functionality Gaps.
- Application on unwired platform – which means distribute business users’ can Access the application remotely
- Integration / Data Exchange will get emphasized.
- Data Security will get emphasized.
So if you are a SAP Retail user and if you have to really understand the SAP Offering – then simply worded, Big Box thinking is being converted and made available in a small box. However, it is the back bone of ERP that makes this even more interesting - now it is really infused with greater power of Information.
Mobility has had a large role to play in success of FACEBOOK and TWITTER – for them Unwired access point of information became a key point! But I feel what really was the biggest key point of success - Mobility brought the user to the “Point of Well Informed”.
"Point of Well informed" is a concern with Retailers too.
- How well informed is your Merchandiser or Buyer about SKU Family ?
- How the new Product Launched is performing across Stores?
- What are key Sales Trends’ building in a Store?
- Is Category meeting predicted GMROI across Stores?
… and so on and on.
Introduction of SAP Mobility on top of SAP Analytics, is the beginning of a new information era for Retailer users! Using Interactive SAP Mobility Dashboards, Retailers are better informed of their Business today than ever before.
In essence User Experience will make a huge difference. Brain Quest of Information, making every person addicted to these Mobile Gadgets - and this is exactly what a Retail user wants – an empowering experience for the User where the available unlimited information drives a faster speedy decision for the User; to take better control of retail performance! That is also exactly the transformation that SAP Technology stack is offering. That is, if you combine SAP Analytics with SAP Mobility – the information technology for retail industry is becoming Simple yet more Powerful.
Should we Say – ‘Mobiltyics’ Era!
Mobilytics = MOBILITY + ANALYTICS
I believe, to use my own new word - the ‘Mobilytics’ era is here to stay for good and this will open up opportunity for every other retailer to use it for the competitive business advantage going forward.
