ERP And Mobility With M2M Make Better Management

Enterprise resource planning systems form the backbone of any enterprise’s business functions. The veritable alphabet soup that is the list of ERP modules (CRM, SCM, O2C, EAM, HCM and so on), may seem a mouthful to a layman, but to the people involved in business functions, these acronyms hold great value. As enterprises move towards becoming more mobile, these critical business functions also need to evolve and adapt for agility and efficiency.

SAP and mobility – You cannot talk about ERP without mentioning the market leader in the domain. SAP has made significant investments in mobility in the past three years or so, showing that it understands the importance and value of mobilizing the business functions available through SAP. IT has partnerships with the likes of Adobe PhoneGap, Appcelerator,  Sencha, ClickSoftware, appsFreedom, and Sky Technologies. It has also recently bought Syclo, a platform provider.

All these partnerships, and yet, a whole bunch of seemingly competing mobility vendors get to attend SAPPHIRENOW proves only one thing – That the world’s largest vendor for enterprise resource planning software believes that the opportunity is large enough for its internal teams and their direct competition can coexist and profitably address the market. Another point to notice is that SAP has not put any restrictions on the platforms that can be used to mobilize its software. This shows focus on its core business – ERP. What this does for the customers is that it allows them to choose the mobility partner to work with for developing a mobile interface for their business support software. As for the ecosystem, there are more than eighty apps in the SAP app store.

So we have established two facts – firstly, M-ERP market is growing, and the big players are backing it. Secondly, a lot of value can and is being created by the distributed capabilities of multiple players. Now let us look at another trend that is fast growing.

Machine to Machine (M2M) communication – While the core concepts of M2M might seem scaringly similar to the Cybernet from The Terminator or VIKI from I, Robot, it finds many use cases in the enterprises of today. For those new to the term, M2M refers to the ability of one machine or sensor to communicate with another device in order to achieve desired outcome. The communication is automatic, and based on either periodicity or a pre-programmed logic that can initiate automatically under trigger conditions. There are many M2M solutions available today that integrate with ERP platforms.

Machine to machine communication finds uses in a variety of domains like enterprise asset management, healthcare, utilities management etc. In healthcare, a new buzzword is the MBAN (Mobile body area network). This is the acronym for wireless sensors that can remotely report on the health of the patient wearing them. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal titled Medical Devices in Hospitals to Go Wireless, an unmonitored patient has a 6% chance of surviving a cardiac arrest, compared with a 48% chance for a monitored (M2M connected) patient. There is no more ROI justification needed. Even SAP has renewed its focus on healthcare, and integration with M2M is a part of the journey for them.

Another use case for this technology is geo-fencing. Geo-fencing detects the devices and machines in a certain area, and triggers action based on them entering or leaving the same. From raising an alarm in case a shopping cart leaves the parking area, to disabling the camera of a device when it enters a secure location, a lot can be done through geo-fencing. Similarly, for mission critical systems like datacenters, production plants and ATM networks, failures and issues with power or cooling can send out alarms that can be actioned.

The integration of ERP with mobility and M2M will most certainly improve the management outcomes.