Elementum launched to simplify supply chain management similar to the way Salesforce disrupted the CRM for sales, and Workday reinvented software for HR and finance. The company has created a suite of mobile apps that simplifies and optimizes complicated supply chain processes in the cloud. For most businesses, dealing with supply chain software is an archaic process, and things like mobile, realtime access to data, and even good design is hard to come by.They also talk about something called the "Supply Chain Graph" which we might presume is a combination of data from a customer's internal systems, data from the suppliers, and then globally sourced data from the web...perhaps weather reports and shipping schedules, who knows.
"Medical-sector companies are passing out thousands of iPad tablet computers to salespeople to spruce up their pitch to doctors, and at the same time giving Apple Inc. a crucial foot in the door to business customers.
Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic Inc. and Boston Scientific Corp. are among the drug and medical-device firms making the move, while others say they are testing out the devices."
In the next few months, Jeff Letasse, vice president of IT for Conceptus, will hand out more than 220 iPads to every salesperson in the company. He plans to wean them off of their trusty laptops and PDAs, with the hope of never having to buy another laptop for a salesperson again.
The dam holding back consumer devices in the enterprise "has broken wide open," Letasse says.
The Apple iPad and its ecosystem are likely to disrupt existing technology use profiles and business models, and CEOs should ensure that its potential is being seriously evaluated inside their organizations, according to a new report from Gartner Inc.
"How big is this ERP/touchscreen tablet opportunity? Best guess?"OK...according to the statistics available:
So, if we choose to use these numbers -- admittedly guesswork -- then the market opportunity is $50 Billion of legacy fixes, or $15 Billion/year of annual sales.
Of course total size is not the limiting factor in enterprise sales. The size is huge. It's an elephant.
The question is, how fast can we get this elephant to adopt a good new idea, even when that good idea is really easy to prove?
Elephantine rules are slow rules. The ERP market is difficult to change. But again, it's huge, so that is the tradeoff.
The strategy therefore is to pick the sector of that elephantine market that will be easiest to change, and focus our efforts there. What's the sharp stick we can poke with?
In which parts of the enterprise does the iPad offer the best productivity gains? We set out to find the answer to that question, and the answer is: 20%, 40%, and 34%.
We chose a set of five common data entry screens from a corporate ERP suite – Financials, MRP, CRM, and Human Resources – from vendors such as SAP, Oracle, Lawson, and Salesforce.com. These screens were chosen as a cross-section representing (as best as possible) the thousands upon thousands of legacy database applications used in organizations across the world.
We built “iPad optimized” versions of those screens, which exactly duplicated the data entry functions in the standard Windows/keyboard versions. To build the iPad version we used the new iPad-enterprise prototyping tool just released by our partner firm iOptimal.
We chose these five functions carefully, to represent what we call the “40/20 rule." 40% of corporate users – generally managers, supervisors, and engineers – use only 20% of the ERP functions. By a happy coincidence, those 40% of users – our target audience – are also the ones that most likely to use a tablet, since they are generally people who “move around the office a lot” and have difficulties using laptops and workstations. Also by happy coincidence, the 20% of functions needed by these people are functions which don’t require large amounts of keyboard use, thus are well-suited for mobile tablets.
Converting that 20% subset of of ERP functions to the iPad should create significant time savings and a lot of happy users (and happy IT managers as well, since happy users become enthusiastic supporters for IT departments).
The Results
For our five representative tests, we had people perform the correct functions as fast as possible. We timed them by watching keystrokes and time motion study (using a stopwatch). On average these functions were 34% faster to perform on the iPad, for identical data entered, compared to the laptop or workstation.
Why Faster?
Quite simply, the screens typically used by supervisors and engineer lend themselves well to touchscreen interface. Using iPad user interface standards concepts, we were able to greatly reduce clutter on the screens, use finger gestures to quickly select options (more quiickly and intuitively than the mouse), eliminate almost all keystroke entry, and use location-based optimization to auto-fill and rearrange some fields.
The net result was, faster use.
Easier To Use
In addition, the screens were dramatically more enjoyable to use. Old style ERP is often quite crowded and complex to work with, with multiple layers of menu and complex coding structures; we took the opportunity to clean it up.
Caveats
Added note (9/14): People say we should do this test again, with a bigger sample set and with more "disinterested observers." Maybe even a media extravaganza! Great idea.
This is a illuminating quote. Executives didn't want to use laptops because they would look "disengaged." So in theory laptops give people all the facts at hand, but in reality, human nature what it is, the design and form factor of laptops can make some people uncomfortable.Now decisions at meetings are made quickly thanks to the iPad, he says. In the past, no one fired up laptops at meetings in a conference room because it made the executive look disengaged. When a topic came up that required facts to make a decision, such as the difference in cost for an allocated requisition and an unallocated one, the vice president of HR would have to research it later. Thus, the topic would be tabled for the next meeting.
Today, the vice president of HR can look up the pay grades on the iPad, find the difference, and then ask the president if there's room in the operating budget. The president can look it up on the iPad and respond appropriately. "You can't get closure if you don't have the facts," Rennie says. "With the iPad, it's a very different conversation because everyone is armed with the facts at their fingertips."
...the study looks at five distinct attributes of data—quality, usability, intelligence, remote accessibility and sales mobility—and examines how a 10 percent improvement in any one or two of these attributes affects the metrics commonly reported for assessing the financial performance of businessesWhy is this relevant to iPad in the enterprise? Because the use of touchscreen tablets can be used to significantly improve access to enteprise data and user productivity. We can measure productivity increases by mobile devices and plug them into this 10%-2 Billion conversion, to give us a total dollar value for iPad usage.
In a recent iPad/iPhone Meetup group meeting there was a wide-ranging talk about the “best opportunities for iPads in enterprise software” (a topic I keep bringing up, which doesn’t seem to be irritating people yet).
CRM, collaboration, and Enterprise 2.0 were the crowd favorites. Gartner has their famous “Magic Quadrant” analysis, so without further ado, here is our Magic Trident.
Why are these tools a winning combination?
Why IPad any more than laptop?
Since E 2.0 and CRM have been around for years, and the iPad is a newcomer, we need to explain the iPad’s equal footing. I imagine people saying “Why are mobile tablets a crucial part of this picture? Sales reps already carry laptops and already have access to CRM and E 2.0 information. The tablet plays no pivotal role.”
I think the iPad does play a pivotal role.
The touchscreen isn’t just easier and lighter-weight…it is a fundamental improvement in sales customer communication. This point is subtle and hard to explain, but so many sales reps are raving about this quality. Something about the form factor of an iPad makes it so much more useful compared to a laptop.
Laptops are akward. Any awkwardness in the sales call is poison, something to be avoided. On the other hand, iPads are lovely to handle and use, and this quality also impacts the sales rep’s attitude. iPads can be handed to the customer, and can easily be passed around a group. This can create the all-important first steps towards customer commitment.
As one sales rep said: “there is something powerful about handing an iPad to your customer and letting them drive the presentation with their own hands. It perks up the whole sales call. Maybe it’s some kind of psychology trick. I don’t know but I am using it ”
(Edit 10/26/2010): For a great discussion of this see "Enterprise 2.0 and CRM, Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together" and another announcement from the Enterprise 2.0 conference.
Translation: Enterprise users get bad interfaces because enterprises aren't willing to spend the time and money to fix those interfaces.
The average enterprise will continue to make ineffective use of any and all available UI technologies. The root problem is not lack of powerful UI technology. Instead, the root causes for a suboptimal user experience consist of lack of appropriate process and governance, and lack of a genuine commitment to a quality user experience....
Remember again that enterprise applications salres are $60 Billion/year, for a cumulative total of half a Trillion dollars over 20 years, so that's a big legacy market to convert.
Forrester Research survey data shows that more than two-thirds of companies are still investing in their ERP systems--despite the recession, upgrade costs and maintenance fee complaints.
Since the dawn of automated, electronic capture of corporate financial, operations, supply chain, HR and sales information data—what's become, more or less, ERP—companies have cumulatively spent billions, if not trillions, on managing and trying to extract value from their vast data repositories.
ERP isn't much different today than the technology early adopters installed 15 years ago. But new technologies make traditional ERP seem dated. "The concept of ERP is not dead, but the technology under it is," says Bill Brydges, managing director of the ERP practice group at the consultancy MorganFranklin.
Cloud computing, mobile applications, social knowledge sharing and predictive analytics present trouble spots for CIOs trying to move ERP systems into the future.
Meanwhile, Christensen advises, CIOs need to keep making noise about bringing in upstart vendors that offer the technology the big guys don't. CIOs Galonis at Choice Hotels and Harten at Haworth are doing just that as they pressure their current vendors to hurry up with new capabilities.A New Source of ERP Value
Further out, Stanec, for one, dreams of seeing ERP vendors develop packages that help companies generate revenue. "Then," he says, "we'd have something interesting to negotiate."
CIOs want better integration of analytics for data insight.The same could be said for mobile.
