Using iPhone and iPads for Business Intelligence and Supply Chain Management
B&W Group's Business Systems Manager Paul Fryer discusses in this report the introduction of BI and iPhone/iPad smart devices. Besides talking through the initial decision process concerning BI and its implementation criteria, Mr. Fryer then describes what happened, user reactions, the upsides and downsides of applying mobility, as well as lessons learned and best practices.
B&W Group, an international leader in loudspeaker systems, started in 2010 to look for a Business Intelligence (BI) solution to work with its existing SAP systems. The initial impetus was to improve the quality of information used for running the business. The emphasis changed once IT understood that mobility was a key ingredient of delivering a BI solution. B&W Group then decided to pilot a small iPhone/iPad implementation to see what might change.
The result has gone far beyond expectations of users, management and IT. Acceptance has climbed from an initial five users in the BI-for-sales pilot to over 80 – representing almost 25 percent of SAP users inside the B&W Group. It has also spread beyond sales management to Quality Assurance, supply chain management and general management.
This case study is the fifth in a series in which different user organizations talk about their objectives and experiences. Through these Constellation Research clients discover what others had to find out for themselves. These case studies complement Constellation Research's Mobile Device Management (MoDM), Mobile App and Data Management (MADM) and Mobile Enterprise Management (MEM) reports.