Mobile SAP EAM:-
New outcome-based licensing from SAP will boost mobile SAP EAM. It helps to grow your business.
For SAP EAM customers, although the benefits of going mobile are quite clear, traditionally businesses with large field-based workforces, like Utilities and Oil & Gas industries, have been the early adopters of the mobile technology. A big chunk of existing SAP customers are not leveraging the benefits of introducing mobile capabilities and therefore not getting full value from their SAP investment. Many large manufacturing industries, service industries and even small to medium sized enterprises (SME) who are SAP customers can see the attraction of using mobile for their operations and asset management.
Based on my conversations with many SAP customers, one of the main reason for not adopting mobile has been the cost of mobile deployment, and of that cost the SAP back-end license cost is generally a big chunk.
Traditional SAP Licensing Model
In the traditional SAP licensing model, customers need a “Worker” user license for each user accessing the backend SAP system. This rule applies to both in-house employees and sub-contractor employees if the mobile solution they use is integrated with SAP either directly or indirectly.
In the end many SAP customers
- Did nothing and carried on with paper based processes
- Rolled out third party mobile solutions which were not integrated with SAP in real time but through a batch process. (Often still requiring an SAP license)
- Deployed portal solutions for use by sub-contractor or in-house admin team
All this meant that SAP Customers were not running their EAM solutions and processes in the most efficient and effective way.
New ‘Outcome-based’ SAP Licensing Model
Based on evolving IT landscapes and customer demand on 10th April 2018 SAP launched a new “Outcome based licensing” model. Through this model SAP Customers can license their indirect SAP access based on the number of documents created, regardless of the number of users connecting to the SAP system.
- Watch the short video on this topic from SAP
- Watch a longer version of the announcement
- Read a good third party analysis of this SAP announcement
Key take-aways are:
- License cost only for creation of documents. Subsequent read and updates are free.
- Document types are interchangeable.
- Existing and new customers can take advantage of this new licensing model.
I predict that this new licensing model will provide SAP customers the clarity needed on mobile SAP EAM access and open the way for many existing SAP customers to actively move to adopt a mobile strategy to leverage greater value from their SAP EAM.
Next Steps
- myJobCard from On Device Solutions is one such mobile solution which is SAP certified and integrates with SAP EAM (PM/CS) out of the box. Read more about SAP EAM and order a free trial
- Talk to your SAP Account Executive and discuss outcome based licensing.
