ENTERPRISE

PLANNING

RESOURCE

MOBILITY IN ERP
AND CLOUD COMPUTING

1.Mobility in ERP

Introduction
ERP was a revolutionary trend that companies have lapped over time.
However providing services anywhere anytime, be it a social application like
WhatsApp or a business driving application like ERP, has become a
requirement in the modern world. Mobile ERP is all about accessing various
services offered by any ERP software through a mobile device such as
smartphones or tablets.
There are certain factors which have made mobility in ERP a necessity. One
of them is service improvements as in better interaction with customers &
existing business applications. Another is better ROI on mobile applications
implementation. However, the most important driving force behind this trend
is attributable to another parallel growing trend, Mobile Workforce.
While in the US & Europe the trend of mobile workforce caught momentum
3-4 years back, it has recently entered Indian organizations and is catching
up fast. Indian mobile workforce is expected to grow by over 50 per cent
over the next two years to reach 205 million by 2015, of which about 65 per
cent will be equipped with smart mobile devices, according to a latest
research report. The concept of traditional office where people would sit at
their respective desks logging 8 to 9 hours daily is fast fading away and is
being replace by mobile workforce. Every company would need to strategize
a roadmap to evolve with mobility.

Benefits of Mobile ERP

These mobile ERP applications allow companies to benefit from improved
quality of service, greater productivity, deeper business relationships,
competitive advantage, and more accurate data capture:
Improved Quality of Service
Mobile ERP systems allow employees to improve quality of service to
customers by giving them access to relevant information.
Greater Productivity
Many mobile workers waste much time driving in cars or sitting in airports.
Mobile ERP helps these workers use that time productively. All mobile
workers have tools, materials and information to eliminate downtime.
Deeper Business Relationships
Having information at their fingertips helps mobile workers deepen business
relationships and response times.

Competitive Advantage
The ability to deliver real-time information on-the-spot to accounts helps
organizations improve their competitive advantage.
More Accurate Data Capture
Mobile ERP software makes it easy for workers to enter all relevant data
accurately as they gather it in the field without re-keying the data into back
end systems (potentially making errors along the way).
Today, ERP leaders like Microsoft have started to develop mobile applications
for reporting and dash-boarding to systems like Microsoft Dynamics GP and
other mid-market ERP systems.

Impact of Mobile ERP on Business

With mobile ERP, your mobile workers can take advantage of the
functionality, data, and benefits of their ERP application not only in the office
but also on the road. Mobility will only become more and more prevalent in
the workplace and organizations should choose a system that can scale with
their business and also have the capability and flexibility to integrate with
new technology solutions.

Human Resource Management

For HR solutions, often referred to as human capital management (HCM), the
benefits are mainly for the employee. For example, employees can submit
expense claims remotely, allowing them to claim when they have the receipt
in hand, rather than having to search for it later; they can also manage their
holidays and personal development remotely, often in their own time.
Supply Chain Management
Supply chain and manufacturing solutions offer more obvious benefits.
Production and operations managers can receive alerts whenever there are
potential problems such as raw materials stuck in transit, or machine
breakdowns. Without mobile ERP, these alerts are only visible when the
managers are at their computer; with mobile alerts, they can be informed of
problems immediately.
Finance
With full ERP access on their smartphone, managers can even authorise
changes to expedite specific work orders or deliveries. And with links into the
finance applications, then finance managers become aware of the
implications of supply or Manufacturing issues straightaway, enabling better
decisions to be made. In very large manufacturing facilities, using mobile
ERP might eliminate the need for expensive networks and ruggedized
terminals.
Sales and Marketing
In sales & marketing, mobile CRM is relatively well-established, but sales
staff can be further helped by having full integration with their ERP system
available on a mobile device. For example, it might be important for sales
staff to understand the profitability of a deal links to finance and
manufacturing can help.
Complex sales can be greatly helped by having a live sales configurator
available. Customers can tailor their solution to their individual needs, while
sales staff are then able to quote delivery times based on actual scheduled
manufacturing. Having a live mobile link avoids any problems arising from
offline deals that are not synchronised for a few.

Future Trends

A report titled Moving towards a Mobile Enterprise Journey of India Inc.

suggests a four-phase roadmap for companies to embrace mobile enterprise
strategy.
Conventional Mobility: Availability of. basic apps such as e-mail, messaging,
contacts etc.
Always Connected: Real-time communication and collaboration facilities to
employees
Pervasive Mobility: Function-specific applications that promote brand image
and make internal operations such as finance and human resources more
efficient.
Automated Workforce: Critical apps like ERP, CRM and sales-force automation
which allows for minimizing paperwork, reducing office visits, improving
productivity and achieving higher sales closing ratio.

Conclusion
In a recently conducted survey, it was found that around 46 per cent of the
Indian organizations currently provide mobile work-styles for employees &
the trend is picking up. Globally too, organizations adopting similar strategies
are reaping the rewards of a more flexible, agile workforce, lower employeerelated and real estate costs and the ability to attract and retain top talent. It
is anticipated that a third of employees will no longer access corporate
applications from the local office and would instead be operating from home,
field, hotels, airports etc, & the availability of workspaces would be a fifth
less by the end of 2020. One of the reports mentions that driven by
employee demand, 91 per cent of organizations worldwide shall adopt
mobile work styles, enabling its staff to work from anywhere.

2.Cloud Computing
Cloud is delivery of on-demand computing resources everything from
applications to data centers over the internet on a pay-for-use basis.
Word cloud was used as a metaphor for the Internet and a standardized
cloud-like shape was used to denote a network on telephony schematics and
later to depict the Internet in computer network. The cloud symbol was used
to represent the Internet as early as 1994.The popularization of the term can
be traced to 2006 when Amazon.com introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud.

Cloud Computing provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to

store and process their data in third party data centers. It relies on sharing of
resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale, similar to a utility
(like electricity grid) over a network. With cloud computing, multiple users
can access a single server to retrieve and update their data without
purchasing licenses for different applications.
Working of Cloud Computing

Cloud consists of layers mostly the back-end layers and the frontend or user-end layers

The front-end layers are the ones you see and interact with. When you
access your email on Gmail for example, you are using software
running on the front-end of a cloud.

The back-end consists of the hardware or the physical storage servers

which stores the data.

Cloud Services Model

SaaS (Software as a Service)
Provides capability to use Provider's Apps running on the cloud
infrastructure. Applications provided such as CRM applications, Helpdesk
Applications, HR solutions. Examples: Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365,
NetSuite (ERP), Salesforce (CRM).

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

Provides Virtual machine, virtual storage, and physical machine. It is capable
of deploying and running arbitrary software. Examples: EC2 (Amazon Elastic
Computing Cloud), Rack space Cloud Servers.
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
Provides runtime environment for applications. It offers API, development
and deployment tools required to create applications. Examples: Google App
Engine, Microsoft Windows Azure, and Cloud Bees.

Cloud Deployment Model

Private Cloud
Operated solely for single organization managed internally or by third party.
It has significant physical footprint requiring allocations of space, hardware
and environment control. Assets to be refreshed periodically resulting in
resulting capital.
Public Cloud
Public cloud provides services over a network that is open for public use. The
security considerations are different than private cloud. Such connection
require customers to purchase or lease a private connection to a peering
point offered by the provider. Examples: AWS Direct Connect, Azure Express
Route
Hybrid Cloud
Composition of Two or more clouds remaining distinct entities of multiple
deployment model. Allows to extend the capability of cloud service, by
aggregation, integration or customization with other Clouds. Cloud bursting
is an extension of the hybrid model where application runs on private cloud
and bursts in to public cloud when the computing capacity demand
increases. The main advantage is that organization pays for extra resources
only when needed.

Characteristics of cloud Computing

Lower Cost

Device and Location independence.

Easier maintenance

Consistency in performance

Increases Productivity

Scalability and Elasticity

Security

Application of Cloud Computing

Used in Social Networking sites.

Can be used to Share Files.

Used to save a huge amount of data.

And many more services On Internet like Mozy, Skype, Box, and Toggle
etc.

Future Trends

Cloud computing has reached a maturity that leads it into a productive

phase

Green Technology- reducing carbon emission

With advent of e-governance, cloud will help heterogeneous legislation