Reliable access to business data is becoming more important for today’s business organizations. This is true for all kinds of information, but especially for sales-related data from SAP CRM. Sales representatives must be able to constantly access accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities. If sales reps don’t have this ability, it is quickly becoming a significant competitive disadvantage.

SAP customers who visited SAPPHIRE NOW in 2010 saw and heard how important mobile solutions are in the eyes of SAP. The strongest message in this direction was the acquisition of Sybase and its mobile technology. SAP’s co-CEO Bill McDermott even said that “mobile is the new desktop.” We provide an overview of the first Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) 1.5-based mobile solution from the SAP and Sybase collaboration: Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM.

The History of Mobile CRM Solutions at SAP

Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM is not the first mobile solution offered by SAP. Here is a quick look of what was — and still is — offered by SAP:

• Users equipped with SAP Mobile Sales for Laptop can download data from the online SAP CRM system and use this information at a customer site to perform sales or service business transactions without an online connection to the SAP CRM server. The client collects and stores data offline in the mobile application and then synchronizes it back to the central SAP CRM system at the appropriate time. This solution is still available today.
• SAP Mobile Sales for Handheld, based on SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.0, is an offline handheld solution for Windows Mobile devices and targets organizations with fewer than 500 users. It allows users to manage customer information and activities and create quotations and sales orders. In theory, this solution is still available today, but because Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM is the direct successor of this solution, SAP advises its customers to use the Sybase application instead.
• SAP Mobile Sales Online helps organizations maintain their SAP CRM Sales data through smartphones. The application runs in a browser while users are connected to their corporate network. It provides scenarios tailored to the needs of sales managers, key account managers, and executives. It does not include scenarios for sales representatives.

Solution Overview

The Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM solution is a fully functional, out-of-the-box mobile application for SAP CRM Sales scenarios. The application is available for iPhone and Windows Mobile (as of press time) and was developed in collaboration by SAP and Sybase. For visual images of what the solution looks like, you can refer to the Downloads section at the end of this article.

The native mobile applications for the iPhone and Windows Mobile provide a compelling user experience, delivering core SAP CRM Sales business processes (such as business partner management and opportunity management) with an active roadmap for mobilizing additional SAP CRM processes and the addition of new mobile device platforms. Mobile users can view, update, and create master data or transactional objects (with some differences across platforms and objects in Windows Mobile and the iPhone). This solution implements functionality specified and defined by SAP’s official CRM solution management department.

Functional Overview

Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM allows users to access all their accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and activities from a single point. All relationships between these business objects are automatically mapped in the application, which allows for fast and easy navigation.

The application has an inbox that shows the most recent leads and opportunities created in SAP CRM. Phone calls, emails, and other events can be logged as activities and sent to the SAP CRM system. Users are also able to view analytic reports such as pipeline analysis, top opportunities, and top sales orders to prioritize actions to achieve their goals.

As we stated previously, the functionality described above is available for iPhone and Windows Mobile. On top of this, the Windows Mobile application allows you to display and update sales orders with their line items. Table 1 shows an overview of the functionality available on Windows Mobile and iPhone.

Table 1

Functionality summary for Mobile Sales for SAP CRM (C = create, R = read, U = update)

Technical Overview

Sybase Mobile Sales for CRM, which is based on the SUP 1.5, offers multiple ways to connect to SAP:

• Web Services: SUP can read and write to any Web Service and is also capable of accessing the SAP system this way
• Remote Function Call (RFC): SUP can access SAP via the Java Connector (JCo). In this scenario, data from SAP is replicated into the cache database of the SUP middleware. From there, it is distributed to the mobile devices.
• Data Orchestration Engine (DOE): One of the components of SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1 is the middleware server DOE. It can access SAP systems, collect data, and cache it. SUP has a connector that can access the DOE via the Mobile Gateway, an add-in for SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1 that is developed and shipped by SAP. In this scenario, the SUP server is not caching any data, but instead acts as a messaging server. It is responsible for pushing data to the mobile clients. This technology was co-innovated by Sybase and SAP and is used in SAP CRM.

The landscape required for Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM consists of the following components (Figure 1):

• SAP CRM 2007 or 7.0 back-end system
• SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1 middleware (DOE with the Mobile Gateway Add-In)
• SUP 1.5 server
• Mobile clients

Figure 1

The landscape for Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM

The SUP 1.5 server is Java-based and runs on a Windows server. It receives the data from the Mobile Gateway in XML and sends it to the mobile clients in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. It supports true push all the way from the SAP CRM system to the mobile device, which means that data is sent to the mobile client at the same moment it is created or changed in the SAP CRM system.

The Mobile Gateway allows you to export the definition of the data objects in the form of an XML file (called for Entity Set Definition for Mobile Applications [ESDMA]). This file is used by the SUP development environment to generate the basis of the application as native source code, which is responsible for data access and synchronization. The client applications are developed in the native development language for the corresponding device as follows:

• C#/.Net for Windows Mobile
• Objective-C for iPhone

This native development approach ensures that the solutions look and behave like built-in applications such as email and calendar. If you want to implement Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM, you need the following roles in your project team:

• An SAP CRM Sales specialist to perform the back-end processes and mobile-specific customizing in the SAP CRM system
• A technical specialist with the ability to set up the SAP NetWeaver Application Server for SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1
• An SAP NetWeaver mobile specialist to set up and customize the SAP NetWeaver Mobile middleware server, deploy Data Objects (DOs), and configure Mobile Gateway
• A front-end development specialist who knows the development language of the target platform and can develop enhancements for the mobile client. This can be either C# (Windows Mobile) or Objective-C (iPhone).

Alexander Ilg

Alexander Ilg first came into contact with mobile software in 1997 when he implemented a mobile software solution for DaimlerChrysler. He has worked with SAP’s mobile software since 2002 and has been involved in numerous mobile projects, bringing more than 100,000 mobile users live. Alexander was part of the team that implemented the SAP NetWeaver Mobile Time and Travel and Mobile Asset Management solutions. In 2006, he founded msc mobile ltd., which focuses on implementing easy-to-use mobile solutions.

You may contact the author at alexander.ilg@msc-mobile.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.

Jagdish Bansiya

Jagdish Bansiya is responsible for the technology strategy and direction of the mobility co-innovation architecture with SAP and the Sybase Unwired Platform. He also leads the development and delivery of the Sybase Mobile CRM applications for SAP. In an external-facing role, he actively engages with the eco-system partners (ISV/SI) and customers enabling them to adopt the SUP and co-innovation technologies and mobile applications from Sybase. He has been engaged in the area of enterprise mobility for more than six years.

You may contact the author at jbansiya@sybase.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.