A New Idea for Enterprise Resource Management

Filippo La Noce

, Maria Ilaria Lunesu

and Filippo Eros Pani

Mashfrog, via G. Peroni 400/402, Rome, Italy

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

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.

REFERENCES

Blinn, B. P., Ghoshal, J., Mwangi, P. K., Rincker, J.,

Youngs, S. (2016). System and method of efficient

mobile device network brand customization. U.S.

Patent No. 9,307,400.

Diebold, P., Ostberg, J. P., Wagner, S., Zendler, U. (2015).

What do practitioners vary in using scrum?

International Conference on Agile Software

Development, Springer, Cham, pp. 40-51.

Gartner, Inc. (2016). Gartner Says Global Smartphone

Sales to Only Grow 7 Per Cent in 2016,

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3270418.

Kniberg, H. (2015). Scrum and XP from the Trenches.

Lulu.com.

Konary, A., Rowan, L., Rizza, M. N., Wardley, M., Jewell,

J., Thompson, V., Webster, M. (2016). Worldwide

Mobile Enterprise Applications Forecast, 2016–2020:

Mobile First, Mobile Only, Mobile Also. Doc #

US40753716, Market forecast.

Liyanage, M., Ahmed, I., Ylianttila, M., Santos, J. L.,

Kantola, R., Perez, O. L., Jimenez, C. (2015). Security

for future software defined mobile networks. 9th

International Conference on Next Generation Mobile

Applications, Services and Technologies, IEEE, pp.

256-264.

O'shaughnessy, J., Mol. J. H., Leezenberg, P. B. (2007).

System and Method for Mobile Device Application

Management, U.S. Patent Application No. 11/844,849.

Owen, R. (2011). System and method for management of

mobile device communication. U.S. Patent No.

8,085,891.

Pierer, M. (2016). Mobile Device Management - Mobility

Evaluation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.

Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, pp. 27-28.

Rao, B. R. (2007). Device and Network Capable of Mobile

Device Management. U.S. Patent Application No

11/854,414.

Schwaber, K. (1997). Scrum development process. Business

object design and implementation. Springer London,

pp. 117-134.

Schwaber, K., Beedle, M. (2002). Agile software

development with Scrum. Vol. 1. Upper Saddle River,

Prentice Hall.