Up until now, mobile analytics mostly focused on simply making business information accessible on mobile devices. For example, the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app – delivered earlier this year with the SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 release – allows users to view reports on a smartphone or tablet. This is without a doubt an important part of increasing accessibility to BI content, but it is just the first step companies need to take in the process of unwiring enterprise analytics.

The next level of analytics involves exploring and actually analyzing vast information on a mobile device and entails taking advantage of third-party services like Google Maps, augmented reality, and intuitive views that present answers instantly. SAP is developing a new set of mobile analytic apps that support such capabilities. These apps go beyond simple on-the-go analytics and actually guide users through their information to help them understand root causes of business problems, get instant answers, and respond from anywhere.

For example, the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer mobile app enables users to find data simply by using key word search, sort and filter data, generate charts, interact with the data, and also share reports by email or bookmark. And since October of this year, integration with Google Maps and augmented reality capabilities are now a standard part of the app.

Leveraging the iPhone or iPad’s GPS location and compass, the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer mobile app is able to provide users with geo-localized business information. Users can call up a list of business locations, for example, and see the points of interest displayed either on a map or overlaid onto the real world. And simply by tapping a particular point of interest, users get more detailed information via the familiar SAP BusinessObjects Explorer interface. This video shows the app with its integrated augmented reality tools in action.

The SAP BusinessObjects Explorer mobile app is currently available for free in the App Store on iTunes. With over 240,000 downloads, it is one of the most downloaded business apps on iTunes. It is also the most used frontend to SAP’s powerful in-memory computing database, SAP HANA.