With the changing business environment, companies continue to transform themselves into digital enterprises.

Although the impact of mobility is not new, the mobile experience is entering a new age that swarms the business environment with beautiful productivity tools, driving significant changes in the way we work, communicate, sell, and buy. All of this has led to the rise of new opportunities and challenges, and has become the catalyst for driving digital transformation of enterprises ranging from superior customer experience to enhanced productivity and the way we communicate and effectively collaborate with efficiency.

While the need to deliver agile, mobile-first experiences might seem self-evident, the reality is that building an IT environment that reduces complexity, increases productivity, and integrates every piece of the business can be incredibly difficult. Large enterprises are so complex – with multiple layers, business units, legacy systems, and departmental silos – that agility can seem almost impossible.

A recent SAP paper, The Critical User Experience You Are Not Prioritizing, outlines three distinct challenges companies face in trying to deliver a compelling enterprise mobility user experience:

1. The underlying business systems are not truly linked through a digital core to provide a seamless user experience for the end user, resulting in wasted time and added complexity.

2. The mobile user interface is not prioritized or developed to the point of becoming the preferred business tool for employees in every situation.

3. The scope of enterprise mobility efforts is set to improve current business models as opposed to totally reimagining the way that the company does business and how users act most effectively in this new reality.

Workers across industries should be able to access mission-critical enterprise data from numerous sensors and devices deployed around the globe, make decisions, and take action right from their iPhone or iPad. For example, a field maintenance worker should be able to quickly assess the integrity of a piece of machinery or a turbine, order parts, or schedule service, on the spot from their iPhone. Or a doctor should be able to securely access patient data from the cloud and share it via an iPad with other healthcare professionals to expedite proper medical treatment.

At Charité University Hospital in Berlin, they’re already well on the path to their vision of the hospital of the future. Doctors carry the patient’s entire medical report with them on an iPad and can retrieve test results, x-ray images, and prognosis reports in real-time from the secure private cloud.

Developments like the new partnership between SAP and Apple are revolutionizing enterprise applications because developers, partners, and customers can build native iOS apps tailored to their business needs to manage critical business operations.

“We are extraordinarily excited about the promise of the Apple and SAP alliance,” said Martin Peuker, Associate CIO, Charite, and IT Director, Berlin Institute of Health. “This partnership will build on our foundation of co-innovation and patient care impact, and will extend what is possible with SAP EMR Unwired on iOS devices. We look forward to holistically transforming patient engagement and clinical research together to advance precision medicine.”

A rich, secure, and powerful digital experience is key to meaningful engagements, and with flexible mobile tools, companies can customize digital experiences for their employees with personalized, targeted content for effectively connecting with customers, co-workers, and partners. With such digital experiences, businesses can take a giant leap forward with consumer-grade, enterprise-built iOS experiences that will yield greater organizational efficiencies by providing instant access and breaking down communication barriers.

• Learn more about the Apple and SAP partnership to revolutionize work on iPhone and iPad
• Read the SAP paper The Critical User Experience You Are Not Prioritizing.
• Download the latest digital report from SAP The Digital Economy: Reinventing the Business World.

Kevin Ichhpurani is executive vice president of Strategic Business Development at SAP.

This story originally appeared on The Digitalist Magazine.