Mobility is increasingly becoming a prominent requirement for a lot of businesses' enterprise and resource planning (ERP) strategies, according Louis Laurie, sales and marketing director at Dac Systems.
"We have not had a single formal request in the ERP environment where mobile is not specifically addressed, not necessarily because companies want to roll it out straight away, but primarily because they want to be ready, it's on everyone's mind," he says.
"One can look at the globally acknowledged trend of mobile devices versus personal computers - the growth rate for almost all PC categories is negative; and for every class of mobile devices, the graph is moving upwards."
According to Laurie, what makes a difference is adding business processes and mobile in the same sentence.
"It's about devising a process that uses mobile or is in part mobile, in addition to all the other ways that business processes are delivered, so a blue collar worker with an entry-level smartphone can get his work order for the day - which is already programmed in the ERP system - and be able to track the production process and performance records with none of this adding more workload to his foreman in this example," Laurie explains.
He points out that like with social where new platforms continuously enter the business space, it's still not easy to determine the impact that mobility has on businesses' profits.
Kethan Parbhoo, head of Microsoft's Dynamics business in SA, concurs, saying a lot of business strategies are moving into the mobile space, forcing the demand for business applications on mobile to be relevant to business requirements.
"Gone are the days when financial directors would not be able to approve budget requests because they are out of the office. Provided there's connectivity, they want to make business decisions from anywhere. A few years ago, this was a pipe dream but it's now happening at an incredible pace.
"Retailers, for example, are looking to adopt a mobile point-of-sale instead of one which is stuck in the number of physical spaces they have."
Mobile is also re-modelling business models in big companies with Microsoft's acquisition of a device company like Nokia, Parbhoo notes.
"South Africa has really moved quickly in embracing this transition, with mobile ERP strategies used by our financial institutions and retailers exceeding most western countries," he says. "Technology will enable us to implement these strategies and make a difference in areas of education, healthcare, research and skills development," Parbhoo concludes.
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