The Fullest Guide to Mobile ERP Strategy Development: Examples & Reasoning

Just imagine, one of your sales representatives go on a business trip and he/she is able to look through the company statistics and even manage deals on the go. That's only one of the hundreds of possible use cases which influence on a total efficiency level.

In this article, we consider the main benefits of mobile ERP solutions, give you several hints on mobile ERP strategy development for your company, and tell several success stories.

Before we get to mobile ERP strategy itself, it's vital to find out whether you can benefit from this solution at all.

Besides, respondents were asked which departments and business areas would require a stronger focus on mobile ERP access. As a result, interviewers listed multiple benefits for different departments but the leading ones were sales and management.

Now it's more or less clear who needs the mobile ERP system. It's time to look at how exactly they can benefit from it.

It would be wrong to deny the fact we carry our smartphones throughout the whole day. Employees are able to perform their duties via their phones being in another part of the building, on the train/plane, taxi etc. The mobile ERP creates a seamless working experience and opens more space for productivity growth.

If these benefits match your expectations -- you should consider ERP mobile application development. Before moving forward you need to develop the ERP mobile strategy that would be viable in your company.

Bear in mind there are a lot of technical peculiarities that may not allow you to put the entire functionality of company's main ERP system (if any) into the mobile one. The main reason for this is that the processing power on smartphones and tablets is lower than on PCs. Besides, it's a matter of design and user experience as screens of mobile devices are small.

So, you should be ready to opt for the most relevant features that your employees may need being away from their computers. The only way to know for sure what functionality you can transfer is to have a chat with a provider of mobile development services, as well as end users.

In the beginning of the article, we already considered departments that need mobile ERP most of all. Of course, you may have absolutely another situation and focus spots at your company. However, I think you would agree that salespeople should be highly mobile. Respectively, you have to take into account any issues they can be faced with (e.g. connectivity, data security) and do everything possible to soften them.

So, think through the possible difficulties your employees can be faced with and ways how to solve them. It relates not only to sales representatives but any other worker.

User experience is something that makes interaction with an app much easier and effective. By neglecting it you will rather waste money than increase the overall company's efficiency. It's important to take care of your native ERP mobile app performance since users expect it to work as fast as consumer apps do. If to violate these expectations -- the app's UX will suffer.

As a matter of fact, you should discuss with UI/UX designers the scope of features you want to see in your mobile ERP app so they could consult you whether it's possible to tailor them for smaller form factors (smartphones/tablets) and screen resolutions.

There are two things to consider:

It's a quite important issue that defines the usefulness of your mobile ERP solution in peculiar cases. Let's say your employees are going to a business meeting with potential customers somewhere far from the city or even abroad. They can face poor internet connection or it's absence in that area and the solution you built to increase their productivity will be just useless.

The proven way to avoid this, is to permit saving data locally to a mobile device. However, remember about safety measure we discussed above.

Again, there are a plenty of things to consider. For example, if your company provides employees with corporate Android smartphones, it's reasonable to develop an Android appwithout a version for iOS and vice versa. In case, you want to give them an opportunity to download the ERP mobile application to mobile devices of their own, you should consider the variant of developing for both platforms. Otherwise, many employees won't use it at all.

Remember that each separate mobile app takes additional money investments or human resources. So, weight all the pros and cons carefully.

Talking about ERP mobile application development, there are also several ways to turn your ideas into a reality:

• Form in-house team of mobile developers on your own;
• Refer to IT outsourcing company that'll take all the responsibilities. 

The first variant can be time-consuming and inconvenient for some companies. The second one doesn't demand much time and efforts from your side. Sometimes it's much cheaper to hire an outsourcing company than an in-house team. For example, top mobile app development companies from our region charge $25-$50/h, while in the US this price ranges between $100-$250/h.

Most companies provide it's customers with flexible price models based on their needs in order they didn't overpay for services. It's a great option if you are on a tight budget.

As soon as you've worked out the mobile ERP strategy that covers all these considerations, it's time to take care of business processes that'll support this strategy.

Take into consideration that mobile ERP app doesn't replace these processes but go in parallel with them. For instance, if ERP app allows to open and close a sale that doesn't mean you should stop supporting these processes in-house. Don't hesitate to tightly involve end users in strategy testing.

Let's consider several ERP strategy examples.

Kawasaki's consumer product division placed in Lincoln has taken over from the card-based Kanban management board to the mobile ERP strategy. It's worth noting the solution was further integrated with Kawasaki's ERP system and wasn't the full-fledged mobile ERP itself.

This native mobile app was created for assembly and warehouse staff who can access it through iPads and Android-based devices. Company's representative claim they save over $3,500 a day with it's help. That's over $1.2 million annually.

The approach that Kawasaki has chosen may work for your company as well. As an option, you can cover the areas where your employees experience lack of mobility by means of a mobile app and then integrate it with the existing ERP system.

This company deals with electricity, heating, and cooling. Their task was to minimize IT costs by adopting mobile ERP solution. With it's help, they managed to get rid of paper documentation at all. Besides, they integrated this solution with the main ERP system so their mobile developers could access the real-time data, check email, process service order activities etc.

It's up to you which one to choose -- a full-scale mobile ERP or a separate app that integrates with your main ERP system. You can contact us for consultation anytime.

Like this article? Subscribe to our newsletter! No spam, we promise. Just one letter a week to your inbox with the latest articles and videos from our team.