Last week I noticed an article about a new Android app that’s integrated to Microsoft Dynamics GP, allowing users to submit their timesheets any time, any place, via their mobile phone.

While there’s been an explosion of mobile apps over the last few years, my personal experience with consumer mobile apps made me wonder how much use business apps are really getting.  While a quick search didn't find anything specific on that Amy Gahran’s March 21, 2011 article from CNN Tech cites some interesting general data from mobile metrics firm, Localytics.  In a recent study, they found that only 26% of downloaded mobile apps are used more than once!  This would seem to indicate either issues with the applications themseleves, or some sort of mismatch between the apps and user needs.

So, what are the key drivers for accounting and/or ERP software mobile apps?  What needs are users looking to fulfull with mobile apps? One key driver is timeliness – real-time access or delivery of accurate up to date information, anywhere and any time.  The Aberdeen Group's report on "Mobility in ERP 2011" correlates timely access to information to operational success and the ability to react quickly to events:

“ERP provides decision makers with the visibility into their business that can assist in strategy execution. It is important for this information to be as accurate and timely as possible. A decision may be wildly inappropriate if based on obsolete information. When critical business events occur, decision makers need access to timely and accurate information so that they can react accordingly. Mobile access ensures that this information is getting to the right people at the right time. With Best-in-Class companies 68% more likely than all others to be notified in real time of exceptions, those companies are more likely to react immediately, regardless of location. In Laggard companies, less than a third even distributes ERP information through emails, texts, and calls of ERP alerts. Once again this puts Laggard companies at a significant disadvantage in reacting to business and market events.”  (Read full text: http://websan.com/downloads/Mobility_for_ERP_Aberdeen.pdf)

Tensoft's High Tech Dashboard (HTD) includes mobile access, which was developed to meet this need.  Tensoft HTD provides an overview of key business data in real-time.  Daily updates create feedback loops and performance monitors via daily email alerts sent to the executive team.  This kind of visibility can have a significant impact on operations, and has made this functionality a favorite among many of our customers. 

If you haven't had a chance to look at Tensoft HTD, here's an 8 minute demo: http://www.tensoft.com/video/2011-12-22_HTD_Demo.wmv.  Please contact us if you'd like more information.

 Tensoft High Tech Dashboard (HTD) has just been selected as one of the Top 15 Most Useful Add-ons Worldwide for Microsoft Dynamics GP, according to DynamicsWorld.co.uk.

In today’s tough economic climate, products like Tensoft HTD can make a huge impact on the quality of a company’s decisions. It allows companies to fully leverage the data captured by Microsoft Dynamics GP, then organize and analyze this information to gain insight and uncover important trends. Companies gain a transparent and detailed financial overview of all business operations in real-time, providing up-to-date data for making confident business decisions with easy-to-use analytical tools.

·         Tensoft High Tech Dashboard webcast

·         HTD demo

·         More on Tensoft HTD

  Tensoft’s High Tech Dashboard (HTD) is one of our newer products, but customers who’ve been using it already swear by it. One of the keys to its value is its ability to look at booking/billing/backlog information on a daily basis. With HTD, company executives simply check their mobile device every morning, and get an up-to-date reading of this key performance indicator.

Booking/billing/backlog reports are common for many tech companies, but may not be as familiar to those outside of that industry.  A booking is a new order.  It’s not revenue yet, because it hasn’t shipped, but this data is a leading indicator of where revenue is heading, and whether or not a company is going to make its numbers for the quarter. Backlog numbers indicate how much the company is going to ship, a number which can be time phased to see when it should turn into revenue. Together, these provide a quick indicator of health.

I’m always amazed at the effort companies will put into tracking bookings/billing/backlog manually. Often, we’ll go into a company and discover that one person’s entire job is to maintain a monster booking/billing/backlog spreadsheet. This huge spreadsheet gets passed around the company, but by the time the updates are done and it reaches all key personnel, it’s already out of date.  (Not to mention, highly suspect, due to the high incidence of error inherent to spreadsheets.)

Tensoft HTD both automates this process and provides options to do a lot more with that data.  ERP systems generate a huge amount of data, but this needs to be turned into actionable information to help execs make informed decisions. Tensoft HTD makes use of the data that’s already there in your ERP system, including historic sales data, tactical operations data for execution and forward-looking data used, for example, to see whether there’s enough material to meet supply.

Let’s look at a real world example. One of our long-time HTD customers uses the product to send an email to its CEO every day – before he even gets to the office. This email tells him whether the company is on track or not, by looking at performance indicators such as bookings/billings/backlog against forecast.   And, every salesperson in the company also gets a daily email that says: “Here are your bookings, quarter-to-date, and here’s where you are compared to your quota.” So every day, both the company executives and field salespeople get actionable, behavior-driving information that they can drill-down to a very detailed level.  Now that’s technology-driven motivation!