A New Idea for Enterprise Resource Management
Filippo La Noce
1
, Maria Ilaria Lunesu
2
and Filippo Eros Pani
2
1
Mashfrog, via G. Peroni 400/402, Rome, Italy
2
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Piazza D’armi, Cagliari, Italy
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Scrum, Mobile Device Management, Enterprise Resource Planning.
Abstract: Nowadays the mobile market, thanks to latest generation smartphones, is still spreading: this is mainly due to
increasingly powerful computing tools (microprocessors quad core) and to the used operating systems;
Android stands among those with the greatest growth. The fields with a strong growth are those linked to
mobile advertising, mobile infotainment and B2C mobile services, within which our proposal takes place.
The starting idea of this paper is to show the abilities of the implementation of an integrated platform able to
support an organization on its authorization, communication and sharing processes, accessible from mobile
devices such as smartphones and tablets belonging to employees or customers of an enterprise.
1 INTRODUCTION
The mobile market linked to the development of
support application services is in a continuous and
relentless growth; the most expanding sectors are
those related/linked to mobile advertising, mobile
infotainment and B2C mobile services, where our
proposal is placed.
An IDC study (Konary et al., 2016) forecasts an
enterprise mobile applications market in a continuous
and strong growth: from $ 2.6 billion in 2014 to over
5 billion in 2019.
The study conducted by Mobile Enterprise
Observatory splits mobile market into three main
areas:
1. Mobile Devices, namely the hardware
components (Smartphone, Tablet, Notebook), cover
the 67% of the global market;
2. Mobile Biz-Apps, which represent 25% of the
global market, and include development, purchase of
solutions, and App integration with Information
Systems;
3. Enterprise Application Store (EAS), that is the
management platform of a whole enterprise mobile
ecosystem covers the remaining 8% of the market.
The so-called “mobile Biz-Apps” are increasingly
widespread in Italian organizations; the survey
conducted by Mobile Enterprise Observatory reveals
that 51% of CIO (Chief Information Officer) has
already introduced them, it can assist to a sharp
increase compared to 35% in 2013, and only 9% of
samples isn’t interested in using them, whereas 40%
of them plans to introduce them in the next future.
The Observatory categorised Mobile Biz-Apps
into three macro-categories:
- the “Operative” that are the most used starting
from those of Sales Force Automation, already
introduced from 37% of CIO, compared to the 41%
that will introduce them in the next future;
- the “Office Practice Automation”, developed
“ad hoc” in order to support organizational and
administrative processes with specific features (fill-
out of expenses form, permission request, and so on),
have already been introduced in 22% of considered
organisations (even if only 10% use them
intensively), but at least the 46% of CIO is evaluating
them for a next future use;
- the “Personal Productivity”, developed in order
to visualise some information on the enterprise
intranet or as a support for elementary individual
productivity features (Word processing,
spreadsheets), was already introduced from 25% of
the Organisations and a further 45% will implement
them in the future; they are the less used (8%),
waiting that users fully understand its potential.
The aim of this study is to put down the basis for
implementing an authorisation, communication and
sharing system, accessible from mobile devices of
enterprise employees.
Our proposal pays a specific attention to the
management of data security too; within Mobile
Enterprise this management has a high priority at
La Noce F., Lunesu M. and Pani F.
A New Idea for Enterpr ise Resource Management.
DOI: 10.5220/0006518702170221
In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (KMIS 2017), pages 217-221
ISBN: 978-989-758-273-8
Copyright
c
2017 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
vertices and all business levels.
The second section of this paper recalls some
aspects about the state of the art concerning Mobile
Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Security
Gateway (MSG) areas.
In the third section, we present the aim of this
work that is the integrated platform accessible from
mobile devices.
The fourth section is dedicated to the proposed
approach. The fifth section shows the relevance of the
proposed idea and the last section presents the
conclusions and reasoning about the future evolution
of the proposed project.
2 STATE OF THE ART
The proposal places itself in the MDM (Mobile
Device Management) and MSG (Mobile Security
Gateway) areas.
The market has still not many competitors that
propose valid and complete products; the few
participating enterprises have saw the MDM/MSG
area as an extension or a diversification of a specific
market already consolidated and successful (related
to mobile application development, or generic
monitoring platforms); for them the MDM/MSG
wasn’t the enterprise core business, achieving, in this
way, a fragmented overview comparing to other
services or proposed solutions, often developed in a
custom way by System Integrators (O'shaughnessy et
al., 2007) (Blinn et al., 2016).
This approach characterised the market from 2001
to 2008. From 2009, with the spread of mobile
operating systems such as Android and iOS (Apple),
the MDM/MSG market has been completely
improved; thanks to an open approach, today it is
possible to create MDM/MSG for all purposes and
complete platforms, obtained as an outcome of a
sharable architectural structure; and is no coincidence
that the MDM/MSG area became a point of interest
for a huge number of European and American
startups that identify, as the keystone of its business,
the Device Management platforms development and
its services (Owen, 2011).
An important growth of market related to Mobile
Device Management services is expected; this is due
in particular to:
- the positive trend on ICT mobile area (in 2016
the overtaking occurred, more internet accesses from
mobile devices rather than from PC);
- the forecast of a constant growth of mobile
devices sales as discussed in the Gartner study
(Gartner, 2016);
- the explosion of mobile applications spread,
considered essential for business development.
3 THE PROPOSED PLATFORM
The main goal of the proposed work, is to build an
integrated platform, able to support the authorization,
communication and sharing processes accessible
from employees or customers through mobile devices
such as smartphones and tablets.
To be able to realise the above mentioned aim, the
proposed product will support the management and
creation of logic groups in which
employees/customers can be inserted and for whose
must be guaranteed the mutual interaction and the
interaction with the active processes within the
company database that establish the “core business”
of the company itself. They are suitable for an
extension on mobile communication systems
according to a “document based” approach; following
are some examples of these instantiated processes.
The starting idea may be applied to various
areas/sectors:
- tourism: remote access to information related to
travel suggestions or guides about places to visit;
(Expedia offers already similar services, TripAdvisor
too) proposition of an estimate of travel
suggestions/proposals; launch of communication
channels “for further information” about places to
visit; remote management of flights or hotels
bookings; payment management through mobile
devices; “dynamic” management of support requests
during travels;
- smart grid for an efficient electrical energy
management: dynamic display on mobile devices of
its own home energy consumptions; management of
dynamic information related to more affordable
provider depending on energy use time slots;
management of energy supply contract via mobile
device; payment management from mobile device;
EDISONPOWER and ENEL already do this in the
energy context, PostePay and PayPal in the payment
management context:
- agro-industry: display of the agricultural
products’ offers on mobile device; management of
orders and products payments; management of time
needed to delivery products (delivery date and time);
- biomedicine: display of biomedical products’
offers on the mobile device; sharing of biology and
natural science principles that are at the basis of
biomedical treatments; creation and management of
communication channels among patients and doctors
that use biomedical principles.
Among the above mentioned examples those in
which a cooperation among people is requested seem
to be more suitable for a remote use: the authorization
processes in which a physical availability of people
involved are usually more recurring and they can
cause a meaningful process slowdown, even if it
concern a simple consultation process or for the
purchase a good or a service.
In addition to the authorisation process, the
procedures that take interesting/important advantages
from additional channels for delivery or sharing
changes on documents and/or information are those
related to documents that include sensitive data;
The extension of processes typical for the
enterprise that use the proposed platform focuses on
the possibility to use the authorisation/enacting
remote capabilities via mobile platforms, requires that
security standards, similar to those offered when
requests are made through platforms connected to
Internet, must be guaranteed: according to this we
will use the most modern information technological
safe transfer with the use of cryptography to record
the information on mobile devices.
Moreover, the platform promises to create user
groups logically established (i.e. all of users involved
in a process of a consultation or discussion among
experts) and the availability of specific
communication tools able to offer a more direct and
instant interaction with group members.
Simultaneously to these communication services,
a storage area, if needed with an optional
cryptographic protection, might be shared with the
users. The purpose of this storage area is to record the
contents related to the mentioned communication
services and also files belonging to mobile devices
that the owner would like to protect.
A further feature is represented by displaying the
georeferenced data of the enterprise in a personal map
that helps users taking aware decisions.
4 THE PROPOSED APPROACH
The strong mobile B2C services market dynamics, is
reflected by the competitive scenario also in its
evolution and therefore under an accurate study for
project purposes.
A deep study of services offered by competitors
and a deep analysis of the market based on specific
criteria such as advertising, collaboration,
communication, accessibility and productivity will be
conducted. In particular, we aim to identify the matrix
that show relations among already existent services
and the actors that use them. At the same time will be
verified and evaluated on various levels
(infrastructure, costs, flexibility, scalability,
accessibility and security, and so on), the customary
technologies mainly effective for responding to the
Mobile Security Gateway and Mobile Device
Management typical needs. We will start from the
declared services specifications to get to define a
comparison table according to what will be calibrate
the next phases for new primary platform
requirements (Liyanage et al., 2015).
Particular attention will be paid to the middleware
side in order to manage the communication aspects
and the integration issues, and back-end side for
defining the components configuration.
Moreover will be made a deep analysis on basic
and application issues in order to ensure the system
needs from a technological perspective related to
collaboration among applications and collaboration
among applications and data.
The infrastructure that will be studied will have to
be able to manage the flow of data and information
coming from the interaction between mobile devices
and applications management system using an
architecture that promote a clear separation among
data related to the user process and those belonging
to the owner of mobile device.
In particular, the software component integration
will need the development of specific “blocks” that
will include important aspects such as modularity,
interoperability and flexibility through the use of
open standards. The study will interest systems that
may connect the authorisation levels not only with the
application but also with the single service and
eventually to the logical group; in other words the
mutual interactions among users and the interaction
with some process installed on the Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) system, must be
guaranteed. In the context of applications, we will
take into account the complexity issues that rise in
case of interaction among several people that work on
the same process through personal mobile devices.
In order to support software development, a
specific methodology will be defined: on one hand an
implemented and innovative Agile/Scrum approach
as a software development support, useful even in a
distributed and collaborative environment, will be
studied; on the other hand an Agile/Scrum integrating
even the management of enterprise processes will be
developed (Schwaber, 1997) (Schwaber & Beedle,
2002).
Scrum is a management framework iterative and
incremental for an “agile” development: the product
is organized into multiple tasks developed in
iterations and the outcomes are refined step by step;
with the aim to reduce the complexity, a Scrum team
works in single iterations (Sprints) of at most 2-4
weeks (Diebold et al., 2015).
It is better to start with the main features, which
will be further developed or rejected according to the
customer feedbacks received in each sprint (Kniberg,
2015). On the contrary to the typical management of
the project, the customer does not have to wait the end
of the project to see the results but he is involved in
each development phase. In a system where the aim
look for an extension of mobile communication
systems according to a “document based” approach
and to simplify and speed up the enterprise processes
that require a direct involvement of several
professional roles, even geographically distributed, it
makes sense the use of a framework that:
- promotes, in the spirit of achieving a common
aim, the communication and coordination among IT
section, other departments, the involved employees
and where possible, external consultants;
- highlights the visibility of intermediate products;
the customer will see the outcomes as he might
personally check them and give useful feedback; all
the more people feel involved and participating in a
project all the more easily then will accept new
solutions;
- ensures the quality and allows the cost saving.
In particular, in an Agile environment, all main
business areas are structured in a value stream and a
sequence of deployment, according to the number of
Scrum teams assembled in a logical order.
Instead of designing everything, from the design
to the architectures, it can be built one feature at time
and can be build in a rising manner architectures and
interface by integrating the additional features
according to a modular approach and by allowing
frequent and continuous change of features even
along the way.
The requirements of the system to be
implemented will be discussed together with the
customer. For each Sprint, it is needed to plan the
requirements to be implemented that in order to give
value to the customer. During the Sprint Planning
meetings it will be specified what, when and how
development will be executed.
In each iteration, the team develops a prototype
(Minimum Viable Product MVP) that will be
improved in next sprints.
In this way, it might be possible to have loops of
rapid and iterative change with frequent elementary
features (deployments) that will be integrated in next
iterations by promoting an increment of the whole
system flexibility.
Another important aspect of our proposal is
related to the acquisition of the know-how about
users-system interactions by supporting the
development of innovative and efficient user
interfaces of the system to be implemented according
to an User-Centered Design approach.
The design of a good interface implicates the use
of a rigorous methodology that has as a cornerstone
the involvement of the system’s final user. It will be
also evaluated the user interfaces accessibility, in
order to ease the use even to users with disabilities.
5 RELEVANCE AND
INNOVATIVE POTENTIALITY
OF THE PROPOSAL
The more promising sectors for the use of the
proposed platform are therefore:
- mobile business, oriented to internal
effectiveness of enterprises or organisations;
- facility management, oriented to services
distributed from enterprises operating on agricultural,
medical and energy sectors.
These sectors need new and cheap tools
characterized from a low life cycle for:
- taking advantage from devices potentiality, that
become outright essential work tools;
- optimising the efficiency and productivity of
collaborators and customers, that might improve their
own performances, even in downtime (waits,
unexpected events);
- improving the process of sharing data and
information that have to be ubiquitous, that is
available on more devices at the same time and
accessible everywhere even on mobility;
- improving the usability of service used from
workers on their own daily activities;
- incrementing the real and detected security level
related to all situations.
If the first potential system customers will be
private enterprises allowing to optimise their own
organization processes, but it is easy to make an
hypothesis about technological transfer of results also
in other sectors at well, first of all that of “central and
local public administration”; even in the public sector
exists the need for the optimisation of employees that
spend much time out of the office or that need to
authorization in order to make specific operations; i.e.
the law enforcements spend much time abroad, the
operators involved on the transportation inspections,
or traffic wardens that are in charge for the
supervision of park within a specific area: for them
the possibility to use smartphones to remoting
accessing to the informative systems of their own
office would represent a very important advantage in
terms of time saving (and for efficiency), error
decrease (effectiveness) and interaction convenience,
that would bring, satisfaction and increase of the
productivity of both employee and the whole
organisation system.
Another interesting situation is related to sales
world (Sales and Distribution and CRM): the aim is
to give to professionals or managers a fast and safe
access to sales details (contact, activities, offers,
orders, analysis, objects) directly from mobile
devices.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of this work was to put down the basis
for implementing an authorization, communication
and sharing system, accessible from mobile to
enterprise employees.
Our proposal pays particular attention to the
management of data security too; within Mobile
Enterprise this management has a high priority at
vertices and at all business levels.
By now Android equipes the majority of
smartphones altough even the numbers of iOS are
important: for this reason, mobiles components
expected from the design might be used on the mobile
devices equipped with iOS or Android.
The development of platforms equipped with
Android and iOS represents a certain revenue and the
technological growth more convincing in the next 10
years.
Some of the key benefits offered to Enterprise
who choose to implement the platform are:
- increment of the sales force efficiency through
the remote use of sales software;
- increment of the productivity, leaving time for
face-to face sale activities;
- increment of the profitability through a better
management of sales and related forecasts;
- ability to speed up the decision process through
a real-time collaboration and with direct data access.
- increase of sales orders dimension and customer
satisfaction, identifying up-selling and cross-selling
opportunities;
- ability to the enterprise information with the
customer data through mobile devices in order to
facilitate and improve the communications;
- enhancement of abroad sales through the ability
to create cost evaluations and apply real time
discounts.
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