We have been running ASUG Influence Council for SAP BusinessObjects Mobile for more than 3 years now. Without any doubt, I would like to point out that council members have been the biggest influence in shaping up the product roadmap.Year 2013 was a special for us – we reached 1 million downloads and leading analyst firms ranked SAP’s mobile analytics solutions as industry leading. Read more about it here Mobile Analytics is HOT!
Customer connect was very important for us when we started this project - more so because Mobile BI user personas is typically different from the traditional desktop BI users. ASUG Influence council provided us this required platform and I would like to take this opportunity to thank each & every member of this influence council for their active participation over these years. Activities at these influence council meetings range from roadmap validation, building use-case scenarios, validating UX and defining the next round of product enhancements.
Brian Marier from Kimberly-Clark Corporation continues to provide us the solid support and currently serves as the ASUG Customer Chair. tammy.powlas, who is our most active member serves as ASUG volunteer liaison. Today, we have 20+ customers as part of influence council and we meet for on 2nd Thu of every month for an hour. We focus on the following topics in each of these sessions.
I would like to highlight key areas in Mobile BI where influence council members made a difference
- One app to access all analytical content: Initially product support was limited to Web Intelligence content only. With a strong push from the council members we added support for SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Dashboards. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer existed as a separate app, however this content can now be accessed via SAP BusinessObjects Mobile. Today, this app allows you to access all BI content types including Design Studio and SAP Lumira
- Multi-device support: Only iPad was the supported device type to begin with. However, we soon realized from our council members the need to support additional OS and different form factors to be competitive in the market. We added support for iPhone and Android devices subsequently (both tablets & smartphones)
- Offline support: We introduced a feature called Personal views for Web Intelligence content which allows end users to personalize their report view and store it on their device for offline usage. Brian’s company in particular requested for this feature & is now being used by many other Mobile BI customers
- Security & deployment: Security was another key requirement from the council members especially since their BI reports could now be accessed outside their organization using employees personal device. Features like application password, no offline storage on device, time to live property for documents was introduced in the product as additional ways to secure data. We also support several SSO scenarios which helps for easy user onboarding.
- SDK: We introduced SDK which gives capability to brand & customize the application, extend to add custom chart types, integrate with 3rd party security tools and also embed BI content in any third party application.
Influence council provides a channel for organizations to funnel up their current paint point directly with SAP development team & in turn this helps SAP to innovate. It also provides a unique opportunity where customers can learn from each other’s success stories.
Please do contact us (Srikanth, Brian or Tammy) if you are interested to be part of this council.
Related:
You can meet Brian and me in person at ASUG Annual Conference@Orlando where we will hold a Mobile BI Influence Council session.
Add a Slice of Influence to your ASUG Annual Conference Agenda by Tammy Powlas
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