Newsbyte: SAP Benchmarking Report Reveals Companies With Mature Mobile Best Practices Likely Double Operating Margins, Experience Three Times Higher Revenue Growth

WALLDORF, Germany, June 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- To better understand the degree of mobile adoption, maturity of best practices and impact on enterprise performance across industries, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today released a benchmarking report. The report found that companies with mature best practices double their operating margins and experience three times higher revenue growth compared to those with average mobile practices. The global study is comprised of more than 300 SAP customers of all sizes and across all industries such as banking, consumer products, high tech, professional services, public sector, telecommunications and utilities.

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The study's analysis framework evaluated customers in four areas for competitive advantage, including mobile strategy, creation of mobile apps, control of mobile devices and consumption of mobile apps. For each of the four categories, participating companies were evaluated on the maturity of their best practices and greatest business impact and then divided into five levels of maturity. The leading, most mature companies displayed a clear set of common characteristics that include:

• A mobile strategy in place for all departments and relevant processes; input obtained from all external and internal stakeholders
• Established operating system standards and a reliable platform deployed; all security and scaleability issues addressed
• A strong, well-documented security policy, centralized device monitoring and an excellent device authentication mechanism in place
• End-user involvement early in the development cycle and feedback phase; training on new applications and all wireless issues; mobile access to all enterprise applications

The leading companies from the study reported that 37.5 percent of users with mobile access to cross-functional applications experience more than 43 percent higher productivity compared to companies in the bottom tier. On average, survey participants were most mature when managing and controlling mobile applications but least mature when developing a mobile strategy.

While the average company reported that less than 32 percent of its workforce is mobile, 97 percent of those companies have centralized IT departments managing their mobile solutions. In addition, the leading companies experienced almost 28.6 percent decrease in IT spend as compared to less mature companies. Of more than 25 industries represented in the survey, insurance companies have the highest maturity for enterprise mobility while postal services are least mature.

"While mobile is now the primary way people communicate, connect and transact, our latest benchmarking report supports the fact that mobile adoption in the workplace is still in the early stages," said Nick Brown, senior vice president, Mobile Strategy and Market Development, SAP. "The benefits of mobile are well documented and understood by most organizations, but a successful implementation requires a clear strategy and comprehensive platform. SAP mobile platform is the only unified mobile solution capable of meeting all mobile app needs, and we expect to reach millions of developers that will create thousands of applications for more than 1 billion people by 2015."

SAP business performance benchmarking serves as a forum for SAP customers to understand current and emerging trends in technology and business processes, identify drivers of performance and understand implications of adopting best practices. More than 10,000 participants from more than 3,000 companies have participated in SAP performance benchmarking studies to date.

SAP is attending Mobile Connect 2012 this week in Boston. Visit booth 200 to learn more. For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

Media Contacts:
Amisha Gandhi, SAP, +1 (415) 341-7101, [email protected], PDT
Scott Malinowski, SAP, +1 (978) 287-1793, [email protected], EDT

SOURCE SAP AG