SAP Mobility

The Challenge

SAP, the world's largest business software company, with over 47,000 employees and almost $10.6 billion in revenue worldwide, wanted to showcase its mobile capabilities at its North American Field Sales Kickoff (FKOM) in January 2011. As part of a strategy of "refinement and reinvention" in mobility, the company's North American Enterprise Mobility team sought to highlight its Sybase Unwired Platform, which allows developers to create a single app that works on multiple devices. In particular, since the company already had established solutions for the iPhone, the demo needed to illustrate what is possible with recently released BlackBerry touch-screen devices.

Our Approach

As one of a select group of trusted partners that SAP approached to participate in the event, Slalom decided to draw on its mobile app development experience in taking on the mobile enterprise application platform demo. Slalom's track record of creating solutions on multiple platforms, including for mobile devices, allowed us to put our user experience (UX) skills front and center. Slalom's background with iPhone and iPad apps meant we could use our knowledge about designing for a touch-screen UX, whereas most BlackBerry developers don't have that luxury, since the Torch is the first full-screen multi-touch BlackBerry device.

The Results

Under an accelerated timeline, Slalom was able to create a prototype time entry app built specifically for the BlackBerry Torch. This app was then loaded onto 450 devices and distributed to Enterprise Mobility sales teams, technical sales staff, and executives. Branded with SAP's identity, the app was presented and demoed at three FKOM mobility presentations as part of the company's 2011 "Run better" marketing campaign to illustrate how to use it in marketing to Fortune 1000 prospects.