AL-Infotech

SDN has very limited information about Mobile Sales Application for Laptops. This was one of the main motivations for starting this WebBlog. My plan is to give more information about the application, the features and simple steps to customize the application. I will also be sharing some tips and tricks. To start off, this article deals with the basics of Mobile Sales Application.
A Sales Representative or a Service Representative is always on the move and may not be able to be connected to the server every moment. The representatives also have less time on their hands. These conditions make it necessary for any solution for a Sales / Service Representative to have the following characteristics -

• Should be a solution for a Mobile device like laptop, PDA etc.
• Easy to use user interface.
• Faster to create a transaction.

A solution which satisfies all these characteristics is a SAP Mobile Laptop Application. Mobile Laptop Application is basically a solution which can be used by a Sales / Service Representative when interacting with customers and which works in a disconnected environment (with a provision to synchronise whenever connection is established). It is also easier and quicker to create documents in the laptop solution (this obviously requires a trimming of certain non-critical functionalities when compared to CRM Online).
The various Mobile Applications available for laptop are - Mobile Sales, Mobile Service and Mobile Service R/3 Edition.
Mobile Sales - It provides the functionality which can be used by a Sales Representative. The transactions which are possible are Activities (with provision to synchronise to Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes), Opportunities, Sales Transactions (like Sales Order, Sales Quotation etc.) and Marketing Transactions (like Trade Promotion, Campaign etc.).
Mobile Service - It provides the functionality which can be used by a Service Representative. The transactions which are possible are Service Orders, Service Assignments, Service Confirmations and Service Contracts.
Mobile Service R/3 Edition - It also provides the functionality which can be used by a Service Representative. But the difference is that the data is sent to R/3 and not to CRM Server (though CRM Server is required for data exchange). The transactions which are possible are Service Orders, Service Notifications and Confirmations.
It is also possible to generate Reports (the format of which can be customized) in the Mobile Application.
In addition to these applications, Mobile Authorization Management Tool is used to restrict / allow access to certain users to certain transactions in the above applications. The synchronization with the CRM Server is done through an application called Conntrans.
My next blog will be about the general architecture of the framework of Mobile Applications for Laptop.