The big challenge to deliver a business to business mobile solution is that the app needs to run on devices which are not managed by the enterprise. That means it is not clear what device type or factor needs to be supported plus the mobile app cannot just be deployed via the internal app store of the enterprise device management tool.
This is the reason a lot mobile solutions are just deployed as HTML solutions as all devices have a browser installed. This has the drawback that the application is limited to the browser capabilities and the performance of the browser in the location the app should run. A lot of factors can have a negative impact and at the end this is not really a mobile solution.
There is a better solution is to build a real mobile solution. With SAP mobile development kit and SAP mobile cards two very powerful apps are available for free in the Apple Appstore and Google Playstore. Those two apps enable enterprises to build real mobile solutions and make them available on Android and iOS with three simple steps.
- The enterprise develops the mobile solution once and deploys it on their mobile services
- The enterprise sends the external user two links
- First the link to downloads the SAP mobile cards client or SAP mobile development kit client from the app store.
- Second link to register the app with your instance of mobile services
- After the external user has authenticated the mobile solution will install in the SAP mobile cards client or the SAP mobile development client.
Now the external user will have a real mobile solution with access to the enterprise data. The application was only developed once and will run on Android and iOS. The user will be able to work offline, receive push notifications, secure and the enterprise has the full control over the access and data. And the SAP mobile development kit includes also capabilities like barcode scanning.
