MOBILE WORKPLACE APPLICATIONS

The following are two scenarios of wireless applications for mobile employees.

Sales Support
Linda is a member of the field sales team at Theru Tools (a fictitious company name). Each day she drives out to her customers in a van stocked with products. For each sale, she has to note the customer, the number and type of products sold, and any special discounts made. This used to be done manually, and many errors were made, leading to customer complaints and lost sales.
The company was reluctant to invest in laptops for such a limited applications, but Linda wanted the speed and reliability of automation. With the help of SAP, Theru was able to implement a system using low-cost but powerful handheld wireless devices.
Using Mobile Sales (an application for handhelds), accessed via the mysap.com Mobile Workplace, Linda and her coworkers in the field now have information at their fingertips, including updates on new products and special promotions. She can place orders without delay and get immediate feedback on product availability and delivery times. What’s more, the system at headquarters can prompt Linda and make plausibility checks on the orders, eliminating many of the errors associated with the manual process. It can also check if she is giving the right discounts to the right customer, and immediately trigger the invoicing process or print out a receipt on the spot.

Customer Service Support
Michael works for Euroblast, Inc. (a fictitious company name) as a service engineer. It is his job to provide time-critical maintenance and support for the company’s customer’s electromechanical control systems. To do so, he needs to know immediately when a customer’s system is faltering, what is malfunctioning, and what type of service contract is in effect for billing purposes.
Using SAP’s Mobile Service, Michael does not need to carry all of this information in his head, but instead has it in the palm of his hand. With only a few taps of the stylus, Michael accesses the mysap.com Mobile Workplace for all the data he requires, including the name and address of the next customer he should visit, equipment specifications, parts inventory data, and so forth.
Once he has completed the job, he can report back on the time and materials he used, and this data can be employed for timely billing and service quality analysis. In addition, his company is able to keep track of his progress and monitor any major fluctuations in activities. As a result, both Michael and his supervisors are better informed and better able to serve the customer.

Sources: Compiled from “CRM and the mySAP.com Mobile Workplace,” SAP AG Corp., 2000 (a publicly available brochure).