Mobile Business

Today the developments within the area of mobile business and mobile commerce influence marketing, sales and maintenance of products and services to a high degree. On the other hand mobile technologies offer new possibilities like: personalisation, localisation, interactivity, ubiquity, comfort of transactions and emotionalisation. But how can these new applications of mobile business be supported in order to structure a company’s internal processes in a more effective and efficient way as well as to increase the customers’ acceptance and customer orientation? A promising possibility is the usage of innovative mobile devices and the investment in new technologies, e.g. Augmented Reality, to meet these demands.

After looking at the current market situation for mobile devices, a system architecture for mobile operation sys-tems is being introduced. The systematic segmentation of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) and the development of an evaluation scheme enable a detailed and consis-tent market analysis.

This article presents examples of mobile B2B applications. Mobile B2B solutions are often seen as an advancement to their well known stationary counterparts in the internet. Their deployment shall lead to a formidable reduction of costs. Despite this advantage there exist only few examples of successful B2B solutions. Technical restrictions of the mobile clients still prevent their wider diffusion.

This article analyzes how and to which extent ERP application modules are supported by the use of mobile technology. Features provided by ERP vendors and real-world solutions using mobile applications are presented. We discuss how the utility of ERP systems can be en-hanced through mobile components. Our investigation shows that most mobile business applications are found in the modules sales and customer service. On the other hand, ERP areas like finance, accounting and controlling do not yet exploit the potential of mobile technology significantly.