FSN: SAP and Blackberry to put ERP applications on tap

SAP and Blackberry to put ERP applications on tap

12th May 2008
SAP and Research In Motion (the developers of the Blackberry) last week announced a partnership to usher in what they say is a new era in enterprise mobility. The joint venture is aiming to give unprecedented mobile access to SAP enterprise applications through the popular BlackBerry platform.

SAP says that mobile users will soon be able to work freely on SAP, no longer tethered to their desktop computers or laptops or offices in order to perform their jobs. The first output, demonstrated in a launch webcast is a link from the Blackberry to SAP's Customer Relationship Management application (SAP CRM). Salespeople will be alerted to new leads, will be automatically able to log calls on the CRM systems, view invoices and outstanding orders. This says SAP, together with core BlackBerry smartphone applications, such as BlackBerry Email, Address Book and Calendar applications, will greatly enhance employee productivity.

The new mobile SAP CRM application will use the inherent security, of the BlackBerry platform and organisations that already have the SAP CRM and the BlackBerry solutions deployed will require only basic user training and minimal incremental IT infrastructure investments, says SAP.

According to research firm IDC, the mobile user population is set to increase from about 800 million in 2007, accounting for 25.7 percent of the worldwide workforce, to one billion in 2011, accounting for 30.4 percent of the workforce.

“Providing access to and securing broad adoption of enterprise applications with mobile workers has been a pervasive challenge over the years,” said Mary Wardley, vice president, CRM Applications, IDC. “Most existing solutions require users to learn yet another application and navigation paradigm on their devices, and for IT to manage a complex infrastructure to deploy and support. By having a native application on a BlackBerry smartphone that easily extends functionality but retains the native ease of use, users will find it non-intrusive to adopt applications such as CRM. This is an exciting partnership and definitely has the potential to change the game.”

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