The SAP EPM Mobility suite continues to gain momentum, most recently with the addition of Planning and Consolidation (BPC) to the SAP EPM Unwired app. SAP announced a mobile version of BPC in October 2012, and demonstrated the mobile app at SAP Financials 2013 in Las Vegas.
Below are three reasons why everyone should be interested in getting their hands on it:
1) EPM Unwired delivers the right information at the right time.
Imagine a scenario where a manager needs to approve and lock a budget, but powering up a laptop and logging into VPN is just not possible at that moment. What if the same manager needs to run a report to compare the current forecast vs. the latest budget prior to approving the latest scenario? The more accessible your EPM solution, the more value you are going to get out of it. Within the EPM Unwired mobile app, a single user could have mobile access to information under Strategy management, BPC, as well as BI Mobile content. Managers can view Objectives, KPI and Initiative dashboards and interact with their reports. Planning users can make adjustments in a mobile input form and see the results of their input, live, in a BPC report. And all of that content is available on a mobile device under a single application.
2) HANA will make it an even better cloud solution.
Mobile financial applications would typically require a subset of data for users to consume on demand in a mobile environment. However, the introduction of HANA has changed all that. If HANA is already being utilized in your EPM solution landscape, or if you plan to implement it soon, know that this will eliminate the mobile pre-work of parsing and dissecting data for mobile user consumption. It also provides a true “cloud” type of solution, where data is available across client devices, infrastructure, and geographical locations - all from a single, consolidated data source. How powerful will EPM Unwired be without these limitations? How about the ability to input last-minute budget adjustments while in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport? Or to quickly drill down into troubling areas of live data, and to be able to interact with that information via spreadsheet or email? The possibilities are endless, and traditional barriers have been removed.
3) The EPM Unwired user interface is more robust than you think.
Behind the scenes in mobile app development, an initiative to move towards HTML5 has been gaining momentum in a very large way. HTML5 has a huge advantage over traditional mobile app development because it offers far more functionality to the end user, and that functionality can be updated remotely without requiring users to install full updates. Of course, SAP developed the EPM Unwired Platform using the new protocols, creating a future-proof, feature-rich mobile application.
In the real world that translates to some pretty nifty developments, including a new grid environment called AnalyticGrid, which seamlessly recreates a spreadsheet in Apple’s iOS and on Android devices. Users enjoy a native Excel functionality in Windows tablets. Finally, the use of HTML5 empowers SAP Customers to create their own mobile experience, and to add value by creating something truly unique. EPM Unwired promises to bring an interactive, intuitive, familiar environment to our mobile devices.
The fact that EPM software is becoming more mobile is a fundamentally good idea. SAP continues to impress in this area by developing robust, content-rich, future-proof applications that fill core gaps in mobile business needs.
Learn more about the latest beatures of BPC and EPM at one of our upcoming webcasts! Register now!
