The device known as the telephone has seen significant evolution through the years, starting from, of course, the telephone, to the mobile, to the PDA, to eventually being labelled as a smartphone or device. This journey has been significant in the role that portable devices today play in the business arena.
ERP possibilities
Mobility is an integral avenue of digital enterprise systems in today’s arena. The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) of today provides a variety of applications across different devices and platforms to extend the functionalities of the ERP across the ecosystem of an organisation — and its user base — regardless of hierarchy.
At the administrative level, the functionalities that a portable smart device today offers are simply staggering. Administrators of businesses can now use these portal devices to look at reports and dashboards, interact with the organisational business intelligence data matrices, and even get up-to-the-minute information on highly specific data parameters such as a particular client’s outstanding payable balances and status of orders in hand. Needless to say, the cash and bank positions, too, are just as easily available in the pocket of authorised stakeholders.
Mobility matters
While on the move, business does not stop, and the smart device plays a key role in the management of workflow governance and authorizations. The mobility extensions of modern-day ERPs provide stakeholders on the move the ability to approve a variety of requests and documents across the ecosystem of the organisation, ensuring that critical decisions are made and actions are taken regardless of proximity of the resources to employee workstations.
Field personnel can even use these mobility devices to generate transactions from the field itself, from raising sales orders to service requests, all with the taps of a few buttons on their smartphones, which seamlessly integrate with the ERP servers and proliferates the actionable tasks within the organisation. This, no doubt, enhances productivity, and efficiency, all while maintaining accurate controls over the processing of data available. Especially considering that real-time information of stocks in hand, customers’ outstanding reports and various other decision-making parameters are always available in real time to field executives, arming them with all that is necessary to transact business.
The functionality of the apps can further reform the methods of performing tasks within manufacturing, warehousing and service industries as well. Integrated barcode scanners and near field tag devices allow users across all skill levels of the organisational workforce to perform various tasks such as item dispatches, picking stores, delivery confirmation, restocking processes, and various others with inventory items, seamlessly and accurately.
Most importantly, the speed and efficiency of automated tagging systems allows for higher performance outputs, which, of course, results in lowering costs and increasing profits.
The mobile device in the workforce today does a lot more than what it was originally designed to do, and one thing is for sure — its scope will continue to increase, dramatically reshaping its purpose in the workspace.
— The writer is Assistant Vice-President at Focus Softnet
