Written by Simran Kohli, Cutomer Value Office, SAP, Published on June 16, 2014 at
Customer expectations are driving the push for increased mobility in the industrial machinery and components industry. In order to stay ahead of competitors, grow profits, and increase customer satisfaction, today’s industrial manufacturers are under tremendous pressure to provide their customers with highly-configured, turnkey solutions and value-added services.
A recent study by the Harvard Business Review analytic service revealed that the shift from a wired to a mobility-enabled wireless world is proving to be almost as dynamic as the shift from horses to automobiles.
A Forrester Research study published on Managing Mobile Complexity also indicates that enterprises are prioritizing mobility initiatives as a key strategic focus with a majority of executives answering that increased worker productivity will be a significant benefit of deploying mobile applications.
Industrial machinery and component manufacturers need to keep pace with the growth of business mobility, but in doing so, they should not fall prey to the potential risks of going mobile. Industrial manufacturers must have the ability to efficiently address complexities in building a strong, safe, and secure mobile platform that can manage data from multiple applications and storage systems. Manufacturers are striving hard to reach the highest level of mobile maturity necessary to drive profitability and customer satisfaction, but not all organizations have been successful.
A recent analysis from the SAP performance benchmarking database reinforces this fact. The benchmarking reveals that only 21% of the companies in discrete manufacturing industries have a scalable and secure mobile platform that enables application creation, device management, and required security.
Many industrial companies have redesigned their business processes to optimize the ROI in mobile technology, the benefits of which span across engineering, sales, supply chain, manufacturing, and service disciplines. Insights published by the SAP Benchmarking Program reveal that the percentage of users with mobile access increases by more than 2 fold for organizations where business processes are redesigned to leverage mobility.
Mobile technology’s impact is already wide and vast, but information access for employees is merely the tip of the mobile iceberg.
Industrial machinery and component manufacturers can utilize mobility to drive incremental value and accelerate specific business processes such as sales automation, field service scheduling, supply chain planning, and asset management.
- Sales cycle-times can be reduced as sales teams make use of mobile applications to access to up to-date information on customer change orders, product availability, order status, and delivery dates.
- Mobile asset management can enable field service technicians to access data even in extremely remote locations which reduces the time needed to provide error-free service and maintenance of installed-base equipment.
- Access to detailed information for customer demand and inventory anytime, anywhere can help accelerate supply chain processes.
By providing the most current and accurate information at any point in time in virtually any location in the world, mobility can provide significant business benefits across many business functions and roles. From the corner office to the factory floor, mobile devices and the apps are providing better ways for industrial manufactures to stay ahead of competitors, grow profits, and increase customer satisfaction.
Contribution by David Parrish
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