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.
