ERP vs. mobile devices

How to cope with the advent of mobile devices in the field of ERP?

• The rapid onset and continued development of the use of mobile devices raises questions about how to cope with mobile devices in the field of ERP systems.

• We encounter the phenomenon when some producers are trying to get the whole ERP into their mobile phones. Using e.g. However, for developers, smartphone does not only mean different hardware or operating system, but also other procedures and user requirements. For this reason, the solution in the form of a pure reprogramming of the originally desktop application to a mobile phone did not work. The complexity of development and customization in such an application does not allow to offer a competitive price and it is also difficult to achieve clarity in use or the required speed.

• We must therefore look at mobile devices as a challenge to bring about a qualitative change in the way ERP works. It is no longer just about manually "knocking" invoices into the system, customer needs are changing and more and more specified for a specific role or job position. When performing work tasks, the ERP clerk, production worker or member of the company's top management will have other requirements for ERP. Mobile devices are an opportunity to best meet these demands while maintaining the clarity and affordability of the solution.

Thus, the trend is not to redesign ERP as a whole for mobile devices, but to provide a platform on which partial mobile applications can be built for the required part of ERP.

• We consider the most important features that such a platform should have, especially the ability to create applications maximally adapted for specific devices (mobile, tablet, PC, web) using the native functions of the device (camera, barcode reader, etc.). The ability to control through typical mobile functions such as scrolling or dragging must be a matter of course. After training, application development should also be possible on the customer's side - modern ERP therefore provides an API, which usually offers a wide range of functions for communication with the ERP core.

• Last but not least, the form of communication with the central database is important, resp. ERP application core. If it always takes place in real time, we avoid complications with synchronization and possible problems with data quality.

• Read more about Jeeves - mobile ERP.

• We see the future of ERP systems in the increasing use of mobile devices in the form of a number of applications over one database, each application will be maximally personalized and adapted to the device on which it is used, optimized for the process that takes place in it, but will also be part of a unified architecture platforms of the ERP system.