SAP points to consumerisation of enterprise apps to drive growth

11.05.2012
SAP is planning to target the customers of its enterprise customers in a bid to achieve rapid growth rates over the next three years.

Luis Cesar Verdi, President of SAP Brazil, told Computerworld UK that Brazil currently has 1.5 million end users for its mobile applications, but plans to increase this rapidly to 20 million by 2015.

To achieve this, Verdi plans to target the general public by going through enterprise customers that currently use its ERP systems and mobile applications.

"Our strategy is to first help our clients understand how to use our mobile technology internally within their organisations," he explained.

"However, we intend to extend this and get them to offer our mobile applications and infrastructure to their customers," he added.

Verdi said that this is likely to be specifically within the services sector, for example, in retail, financial services and utilities.

For example, an SAP retail client may decide to user SAP software to create an application that allows its customers to shop on their mobiles, which would allow any data collected to easily tie into their SAP ERP system.

Verdi also said that the same might work for a utility company working on a smart grid project, where it could offer its customers SAP apps to control and monitor power usage on their mobile devices.

SAP would receive additional revenue for every client customer using the application. Verdi said that this could either work on a commission type basis, where for every transaction SAP receives a percentage of the profit, or whereby SAP annually receives a set amount from the enterprise client for every one of its customers that uses the mobile app.

Verdi said that he believes that this new model for SAP could be driven by adoption in Brazil.

"Brazil is no longer a country that waits around to see technology being adopted elsewhere. More and more we have seen companies taking the lead locally," he said.

"We may see that some innovator in Brazil decides to implement what we are talking about here."