Understanding SAP Mobility

Posted on November 2015 By Speller International
Sap Mobile

​ Last week the Speller Team got the ins and outs on SAP Mobility, delivered by Brad Williams, Mobility Project Manager at Ausnet Services. As a long term client of Speller International, Brad has an extensive history in Mobility, including being a founding member of Sky Technologies, an SAP-certified mobility solutions provider based in Melbourne which was acquired by global company Kony Solutions in 2012. Brad’s specialities include Technical Lead roles, Enterprise and Solution Architecture and covers technical skills such as ABAP, SAP PI, Mobility.

Mobility forms part of the SAP “Holy Trinity” which also includes the Cloud (Ariba, SuccessFactors, other) and HANA. Brad’s presentation covered key challenges for Mobility and outlined two key paths from SAP, SAP Mobile Platform and SAP Fiori.

Key Challenges:

Key challenges were divided mainly into 3 parts:

  • Mobile user interface

  • Limited connectivity

  • Security

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Mobile user interface covered off the smaller and varying screen sizes present on mobile devices, as well as the reduced computing power, and different data input options that mobile devices provide

Limited connectivity creates a requirement for many mobility solutions to cache data locally on devices to cate for a connected versus unconnected state where users move through wifi, 3G and 4G and no internet connection but still require access to their data.

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Security is a key concern for many companies considering a mobility solution. Aside from the exposing corporate applications to the outside world, there is the added issue of lost devices.

Key SAP Offerings:

SAP offers two key paths for customers:

  • SAP Mobile Platform

  • SAP Fiori

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The Mobile Platform is tailored more for SAP Users who have a heavy usage, or who perform complex transactions, whereas Fiori is targeted more towards casual access and simple transactions – such as Managers approving leave or timesheets.

There is some convergence of these technologies, as offline capabilities for Fiori are now available via the SAP Mobile Platform.

Both paths still require Functional Consultants to map to the business process and for any ERP (or other backend) configuration tweaks. In general, SAP Fiori is much quicker and easier to deploy than Mobile Platform. 4-6 week projects are possible if no customisation is required.