Kinvey, our mobile Backend as a Service (mBaaS) provider, recently announced it has rolled out Mobile Data Connect for SAP, a new tool that connects mobile apps to SAP backend systems.

With an industry-leading field services organization, Bell and Howell is one of the best field services companies. Also, it shines as the first in the world to implement this solution. As a result, they can provide lightning-quick field access to data-rich SAP-based enterprise-resource-planning (ERP) and customer-relationship-management (CRM) systems.

Anu Gupta, Bell and Howell’s Director of SAP Applications, said this new technology being rolled out via an iPhone app greatly enhances the speed and usage of ERP data.

“With Kinvey, we’ve been able to extend our SAP landscape for new use cases, and the performance has been unbelievable,” he said. “I went from 14-second SAP data access down to 400-millisecond mobile-friendly data access.”

IoT Shapes a Services Organization

Since 2005, our field service technicians have used mobile technology via BlackBerrys. However, these devices had limitations on searches and how much data they could display. With the new iPhone app, our technicians can view the history of a machine. They can also share information and images, scan parts, and create and view slow-motion videos. This allows us to know precisely how many hours or cycles a part has been in use. We can then replace it before it fails. It can also tell us if another technician experienced the same issue or has a required part in stock in a nearby city, not another time zone.

As advocates of the internet of things (and people, as our CEO Ramesh Ratan likes to add), we’re leveraging advances in mobile connectivity to backend systems in order to provide the best service possible to our clients. In a demonstration of full transparency, we’ll even share the data and reports compiled by our technicians.

Gupta added that this is new mobile capability is just the starting point.

“Our new mBaaS capability makes integration abstract,” he said. “It makes it easier for Bell and Howell to develop more sophisticated apps to enhance our field technicians’ capabilities.”

Bell and Howell recently completed the rollout of the new app along with new iPhone 6 units. Featuring large user-friendly screens that display more data, technicians across U.S., Canada and Europe can thrive in the field. This is just the latest example of how we are using cutting-edge technology to provide our customers with improved responsiveness and better quality for the variety of systems we service.