EXTENDING ORACLE WEBCENTER TO MOBILE DEVICES: BANNER ENGINEERING SUCCEEDS WITH MOBILE SALES ENABLEMENT

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1 EXTENDING ORACLE WEBCENTER TO MOBILE DEVICES: BANNER ENGINEERING SUCCEEDS WITH MOBILE SALES ENABLEMENT Kellie Christensen, Banner Engineering ABSTRACT This white paper details Banner Engineering successful deployment of a mobile content management solution. This mobile library application enables Banner s sales force to access sales collateral stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from Apple ipads and Android tablets, providing an interactive method for sales associates to share product information and provide anywhere access to sales collateral. With this mobile application, Banner has mobilized their high-value sales and marketing material, which has led to increased sales process efficiencies and customer satisfaction, as well as the ability to further enable centralized content access and control. Read about Banner s successes with their mobile applications for Oracle WebCenter, and how with the help of their WebCenter partner, Fishbowl Solutions, they were able to develop applications that extend the benefits of content management to users on the go. TARGET AUDIENCE This white paper is intended for sales and marketing managers that are looking to further enable mobile workers, such as sales representatives, to search, access and share high-value collateral with customers and prospects via mobile devices. It provides use case detail from Banner Engineering on the limitations sales reps had previously with sharing the right information at the right time, which included the time it took to prepare for meetings and how meetings were less interactive due to information being shared by paper catalogs, other printed collateral and having to send out information hours after the customer meeting if they didn t happen to have it on hand at the time. This white paper should also be read by Oracle WebCenter Content administrations and Oracle IT directors so they have an understanding of the components and technologies necessary to enable users to search and access WebCenter Content from ipads and Anroid tablets. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Banner Engineering ( designs, manufactures and distributes photo eyes, sensors and associated products. Banner is a global leader in process and industrial automation, helping customers increase efficiency, reduce costs, ensure quality, monitor and control processes, and safeguard employees. Banner offers its products through a sales force of internal sales representatives and around 3,000 distributors worldwide. This sales force would typically share product information via Banner s Sales Force Online System. This website contains such sales assets as product data sheets, video demonstrations, and presentations. Although all relevant product information can be found from this website, an internet connection was needed for access. With sales reps and distributors typically meeting at customer sites, often on the actual production floors at manufacturing locations; Interent access was not always available. As a backup, sales representatives would save copies of various product collateral on their laptops. Additionally, sales associates typically carried around with them paper-based product catalogues and other printed product information. Banner has thousands of products that serve the automobile, food/beverage, material handling, and pharmaceutical/medical industries. With so many products, each with their own distinct use cases, Banner sales reps found themselves hauling around hundreds of pounds of paper. In fact, one sales rep commented that he could easily fill the back of his Chevrolet Suburban with sales collateral. Readers of this white paper will learn more about Banner s need to mobilize their sales and marketing content as well as the following: Examine the impacts of not being able to efficiently access and share high-value content while on the go Detail how the investment in Oracle WebCenter Content can be further leveraged by extending its capabilities to mobile devices 1 Session # 636

2 Discuss the technologies need as well as how the system should be architected to make centralized content securely available to users of ipads and Android mobile devices BACKGROUND Banner Engineering is in a very competitive industry. Providing their global sales force with rapid and easy access to all Banner product information is paramount. This includes the ability to quickly disseminate new product information and decrease time to market. The ability for Banner s sales associates to get in front of customers and prospects with product information before the competition increases close rates. Furthermore, providing sales associates with the most accurate and up-to-date product information ensures efficient meetings and increases customer confidence. Banner Engineering was looking to improve the effectiveness of their sales force and distribution channel by enabling these groups to get access to the product collateral directly from Oracle WebCenter Content quickly and efficiently. Banner has been an Oracle WebCenter Customer for many years and has invested considerable resources to centralize their enterprise content with Oracle WebCenter. With this collateral centrally stored and managed, Banner wanted to be able to ease and expedite the distribution of such content to the field for Banner sales personnel, distributors and eventually customers. Business Problem & Expected Benefits Business Problem(s): Inefficiencies in the sales process to have the right information at the right time quickly available to use with customers during onsite meetings. Inability to ensure sales reps referenced most recent content Prior Approach for Addressing Business Problem: Product marketing collateral accessed from Banner website Copies of collateral saved to local drives on sales rep laptops Products referenced and shared from paper product catalogues and other printed material Expected Business and IT Benefits: Rapid access to product information, including product videos, while with the customer Immediately product information to customer Key differentiator service not provided by competitors Time saver (instant on, easy to use, easy to organize content) Increases sales person efficiency and customer service Track content usage and downloads to understand SOLUTION Banner Engineering worked with Fishbowl Solutions to design and develop a mobile application that would enable sales associates to access marketing collateral stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from Apple ipads and Android tablets. This Mobile Library application provides a new, interactive method for their sales force to share product information with customers and prospects, and effectively provides anywhere access to sales and marketing content residing in Oracle WebCenter. Content can be downloaded and stored locally on the device, thus enabling sales reps to remain highly mobile and no longer depend on clunky laptops and paper catalogues to share information. Any content stored locally can be later synched back to WebCenter when a connection is established always ensuring that the latest versions of content are being referenced. The application s navigation structure is driven via metadata, enabling navigation changes to be pushed out to all devices. Access to content is based on WebCenter s role-based authentication and security model. Content items can also be added to an cart providing the ability to links to content items that were discussed during meetings. Lastly, all content downloads and views are tracked by the application using Google Analytics. This provides Banner s marketing team with 2 Session # 636

3 insight into the most popular content types which helps them gauge overall interest across products, while providing data that helps them make decisions on where to focus their content creation efforts. TECHNICAL OVERVIEW Banner determined that they would like their Mobile ECM system rolled out in phases support the Apple ipad first followed by Android tablets. Therefore, the initial priorities and objectives for a Phase I release was to deliver a working solution for the ipad, which included architecting Banner s Oracle WebCenter environment to support distributing content on the ipad. This meant that the following WebCenter configurations had to be understood: a. Metadata Model b. Security Model c. Content Formatting recommendations Fishbowl Solutions utilized their base Mobility API for Oracle WebCenter Content framework and initial reference application for the ipad client to position the first phase of this project. The solution was based on a similar rollout of a mobile sales enablement application at another Fishbowl customer. Mobility Suite API Architecture Features Overview Banner is utilizing features provided by Fishbowl s Mobile API as well as Reference Application. The features of each are outlined below. Fishbowl Solutions Mobility API: o Search Oracle WebCenter online or local metadata using the same query syntax o Download Files for offline storage o Download and store WebCenter thumbnails o Store WebCenter metadata locally o Delete local files o Automatically detect new versions of files and metadata 3 Session # 636

4 o Synchronize single file and metadata o Create or delete local folder structure o Add local content to local folders o Create custom metadata specific to the device o Useful for Favorites and last viewed date o Call an arbitrary WebCenter service o Selective encryption of local documents on a per document basis o Ability to pull JSON formatted content from WebCenter to use in app (navigation structure) o Customizable authentication mechanisms (basic authentication and cookie session management are included) o Create custom folders and organize content according to custom folders o Send content via using a link download content using an template and landing page template. Fishbowl IPad Reference Application: TV Out support Filter by Business Unit, Industry & Language (Settings) Banner Mobile Library Application ipad Interface Information Flow Banner and Fishbowl worked to design the application s navigation structure and architected how the application responds to various user interactions including how security parameters are enforced. The following is a basic overview of the process the application goes through when users are interacting with it: 1. User launches application & logs in to connect to the server. A. Password not stored in the app or on the device 2. All server requests sent over Secure Socket Layer (SSL). 4 Session # 636

5 Middleware 3. User access is validated and authorized to content. 4. Application navigation structure is generated and returned from metadata. 5. User touches a content folder in the application and request processed locally or sent to Banner s Oracle WebCenter system. 6. Application returns a list of documents that the user has permission to view. 7. Users can sync or manually download content. Once downloaded, the documents can be sorted and filtered, stored in custom folders, or ed. Updated files and new required content are synced automatically each day. Content is encrypted on the ipad locally and always transmitted via SSL. Usage is tracked via another API and sent back to Banner for reporting. Android Tablet Support Banner wished to take the integration even further by extending it to the Android platform. All features and functions on the ipad platform were to be made available on the Android platform. The reference Android tablet application shares a similar look and feel as the ipad integration. The reference application shares the same Mobility API suite interface as the ipad integration. An Android specific module provides the native platform functionally as needed. Support for a minimum Android OS level of 3.1 (Honeycomb) and optimize the user interface for 1280x800 resolution. This covers the majority of 10" Android based tables on the market today, including the Motorola Xoom, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, and Samsung Galaxy. The reference application also supports up to the latest Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS release. Banner Mobile Library Application Android Interface Analytics Integration Banner had requirements to collect analytics on access to information via the device application. Their tool of choice was Google Analytics. There are two aspects to the collection activity that was handled with the analytics integration. Online - capture data and return back to the collection database while the person is connected to the application and the WebCenter Content server. Offline - capture data regarding activities while the device is disconnected and offline then once reconnected send the updates back to the collection database. 5 Session # 636

6 Application Updates Banner distributes their Mobile Library application to their channel partners through their secure extranet. They also wanted publically available versions of the apps to be available on Apple itunes and the Google Play Store so that their end customers could use them to access public content. Banner worked closely with Fishbowl Solutions to get the application approved through both Apple s and Google s online app stores Best Practices and Challenges Overcome Best Practices Do not store content in application content can be updated independently Content-driven menu navigation enables navigation changes to be pushed out to all devices Challenges Fishbowl s mobile application uses JSON to query the content server. Banner is running Oracle WebCenter Content 10g, which return results as IsJson=1. This is a very large data file, so a custom parser had to be built so that menus and content display correctly. Native application development required ios and Android development expertise Conclusion Banner s Mobile Library application has helped increase overall sales processes for their sales force in the field. Sales associates can easily download and organize product information within custom folders, which can be created on-the-fly and named per customer. Meetings and customer presentations are much more efficient now as no time is wasted booting laptops, paging through product catalogues, or navigating websites. All relevant product information can be accessed and viewed with touch and swipe gestures, which has also helped make meetings much more interactive and engaging. Increased Sales Process Efficiency Anywhere access to corporate literature, presentations, videos and other sales collateral residing in Oracle WebCenter Content Downloaded content can be easily sorted into custom folders and quickly accessed during meetings Increased Customer and Distributor Satisfaction Mobile sales application not provided by competing companies, providing Banner with key differentiator for distributors Immediately product information to customers during or immediately after meetings, providing another immediate touch point for sales associates Further Enables Centralized Content Access and Control All sales collateral is stored and managed in Oracle WebCenter ensuring sales associates are always referencing the most recent and accurate information Provides ability to track content downloads and usage 6 Session # 636