3i Solutions
User Centric SAP Solutions

CIOs are grappling with mobility aspects of SAP influencing their enterprise landscape. One overriding theme that continues to surface is the goal of ‘simplicity’ without sacrificing significant functionality and feature set. CIOs need to place a mobility strategy without introducing layers of architectural complexity in their landscape. This goal translates in very specific ways such as the absence of native applications in the enterprise. “It is clear that the HTML5 versus native debate is clearly won by the HTML5 camp. The business case for native application development is difficult to justify as CIO’s need to have deep pockets in order to support the mobile platform diversity that exists in their ecosystem. HTML5 really addresses this quite well, allowing CIO’s to deploy one application that will run across mobile and desktop without requiring ‘OS specific’ experts,” says Alon Raskin, CTO, 3i Solutions.

While SAP solves the challenges of deployment, security, and user authentication, 3i solves the issues of avoiding lengthy and complex development projects while still providing a rich user experience in an offline mode. “We find this is particularly important in various scenarios but none more so than in the myFieldService which allows mobile field service personnel to execute work in an online or offline approach. myFieldService solution, has been jointly developed with our partner bluLeader, and provides Mobile Field Service solution for both SAP ERP and SAP CRM,” adds Raskin. Map view provides a visual overview of all Service Orders assigned to the field worker. The view can also display the current location of the field service technician. The 3i Mobile platform allows customers to distribute their solutions in almost any manner including leveraging its infrastructure investments in products like SAP Mobile Platform.

“While every CIO would love to have a custom app built for them, this is not realistic for many due to time and budget constraints. The secret to having a custom app built is not to start from scratch. This is where 3i Mobile truly shines and significantly reduces the development time of a custom app,” explains Raskin. 3i is an ABAP based framework and due to this it is able to auto generate many

screens without any custom development. For example, without lifting a finger, the 3i framework will display a drop down list of values to a user simply because that relationship exists in the SAP backend. These are one of the many reasons making 3i Mobile the fastest development environment for HTML5 SAP applications.

The secret to having a custom app built is not to start from scratch. This is where 3i Mobile truly shines and significantly reduces the development time of a custom app

The 3i Mobile framework remains compatible with new releases of mobile operating systems. Between Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry, a CIO can easily feel like he is running a software development lab and not an IT department. Their recent roll-out for KARL STORZ a global manufacturer and distributor of medical instruments was a custom app that was developed for their mobile sales staff who operated in environments that required an offline capable solution. The solution was developed and deployed on the SAP Mobile Platform, which allowed KARL STORZ to leverage that investment and integrate their mobile devices with their Active Directory authentication mechanism.

With the constant technological evolution, 3i R&D is constantly on the go, “The HTML5 space is constantly evolving with many frameworks being developed all the time. We are always evaluating these new developments and ensuring that our customers have the easiest and fastest way to mobilize SAP applications,” concludes Raskin.