By Eleanor Reader
To keep up with the growing costumer demand for individualised mobile solutions, SAP AG has announced the opening of a new Mobile Design Center at its Palo Alto campus in California.
The centre allows companies to collaborate with a team of designers, architects and developers to create customer-specific mobile solutions so they can better connect with their employees and consumers.
According to the 2012 Gartner CIO survey, mobile application development has become a huge concern for enterprises and their CIOs, with 61 per cent or respondents planning to enhance their mobile capacity during the next three years, and 48 per cent believing they will become leaders by fully adopting innovative mobile solutions.
The end user is the main priority throughout the development process, with Technology Business Research enterprise software analyst, Elizabeth Hedstrom-Henlin, saying the most important thing is that these solutions are easy to use.
“Usability is more important that ever, and the ability for an app to connect seamlessly to the backend and function flawlessly over time is a business imperative,” she said.
To ensure end users will actually adopt the mobile solution, SAP creates a mock-up of the solution and then collects feedback from the user before launching it into the target landscape.
SAP’s platform is designed to provide the foundation for business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-employee (B2E) mobile app development, mobile device management and mobile security management.
Despite the growing trend, the president of SAP’s mobile division, Sanjay Poonen, believes there are companies who have not yet caught onto developing their apps in the right way.
“Mobile apps have become a priority for businesses today. Yet, many companies struggle to build solutions fast enough and cannot find the right kind of talent,” he said.
