SAP Direct Distribution - A New Mobile App for Direct Store Delivery

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Let's have a closer look to the next generation native mobile app enabling a comprehensive direct store delivery process.

Last Mile Distribution is a central component of SAP's direct store delivery solution SAP Direct Distribution. It is SAP's offering that adds a level of flexibility previously not possible to a decades old process across the Consumer Products and Wholesale distribution industries.

This blog post focuses on the native mobile app which supports delivery drivers to execute a paperless delivery of goods on their daily route. An increased workforce efficiency is key with a well designed mobile solution leveraging native on-device capabilities which allows workforce to provide a prompt, reliable and friendly service to their customers.

Why using a new mobile app for SAP Direct Distribution?

The new native mobile solution addresses many of the challenges delivery drivers face on their daily routes. Drivers have to deliver within the planned delivery times and work under high time pressure. Fast processing of customer visits is prerequisite to keep the time schedule while at the same time the customer interaction and service quality should be in focus. More than that, workforce must ensure all documents reach the back office for settlement, avoiding differences in reconciliations. Having that in mind, the expectations towards the new native mobile solution is obvious and its benefits are based on the following key pillars:

• Enable delivery drivers to efficiently transport consumer goods from a high-capacity freight station or port to their final destination.
• Digitalize the delivery driver workflow in the field while reducing human error and eliminating paperwork.
• Reduce costs with fully integrated technology stack w/o middleware and direct connection to SAP core.
• Increase user acceptance by simplified and user-friendly mobile app experience.
  

What are the key capabilities along the user journey?

Drivers are supported end-to-end on their daily route starting with truck loading at the warehouse, navigation to customer visit, delivery of goods and collecting returns at the visit until they end the day with checking-in at the warehouse again.

Check out SAP Road Map Explorer for further details on planned roadmap items.

How to get started with mobile app for SAP Direct Distribution?

The usage of this new mobile solution is included in SAP's offering Last Mile Distribution for SAP Direct Distribution on SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS01 (private cloud edition or on-premise). SAP Mobile Services on SAP Business Technology Platform is required to integrate to SAP S/4HANA.

Typically, the system administrator in your company will configure SAP Mobile Services using the administration user interface and create the API destinations (see Admin Guide). The system administrator would then share an onboarding QR-code with the users of the mobile app.

As the app user, you can simply download the app from the App Store, install it on your phone, scan the QR-code to start the onboarding and that's it (see User Guide). If you just want to run the offline demo, there is no onboarding required. For using the demo mode, just install the app and explore it by clicking on "Try the Demo".

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