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CRM Goes Mobile
July 31, 2008
Will Mobile CRM Replace Your Sales Team's Laptops?
By Angie Hirata
Mobile devices have become an important tool for companies looking for a competitive advantage in today's fast-paced, global business environment. Rapid advancements in mobile hardware, applications and network speeds are bringing the idea of replacing slow, awkward laptops with mobile devices closer to reality. But is your sales team ready to retire their laptops in exchange for a device right at their fingertips?
It's hard to go anywhere without seeing people with mobile smartphone devices clipped to their belts or purses. These devices enable field and mobile sales professionals to keep business moving, no matter where they are, with instant access to e-mail and phone. Now, companies that leverage these mobile devices beyond e-mail and phone are finding them to be true enablers of increased productivity, real-time response and greater customer satisfaction.
CRM Goes Mobile
So besides phone and e-mail, what do salespeople need in the field to be more productive? Real-time mobile customer relationship management (CRM). Mobile CRM provides access to corporate customer and sales data—the invaluable information and processes that help employees work at the pace that customers demand.
Whether or not your organization is currently considering a widespread mobility plan, employees who have grown up with cell phones and mobile devices will demand them, or simply bring their own devices into your organization as they already see the significant advantages they provide.
But before you think about ditching your laptops altogether (or at least leaving them at home or in the office) in favor of a mobile strategy, outline the specific benefits you want to achieve with mobile devices. Consider the following four benefits and measure how this will impact the performance of your sales organization:
1. Improve Productivity and Reduce Downtime
By keeping field sales reps up-to-date and always connected through a mobile device, they can move out of the confines of a traditional office and office hours. Able to juggle many requests at once, and stay on top of each customer no matter where they are, they can build stronger relationships with clients than those that rely on traditional office devices. When comparing the time and effort it takes to turn on and click to a CRM application on a mobile device versus a laptop, there is no contest. Mobile CRM has the power to reduce downtime to keep sales people productive when they’re waiting in a lobby or in line at the airport—here, they can easily access CRM on a device that fits in their pocket.
2. Build Customer Intimacy
By providing more information and collaboration on smartphone devices, salespeople no longer are tied to the head office, centered around your data and processes. They can start moving their "center of operation" to where the customer resides. This enables them to spend more time with clients, building up relationships and closing deals. Moreover, the information available to them helps build customer intimacy. Sales and service people in the field equipped with mobile CRM are able to access and update the status of a customer account on-the-fly. With mobile CRM, a sales rep can also get instant updates from colleagues about their accounts. As such, a service rep in the field can see all customer information—not just the details of that ticket or incident report—and then close or escalate an incident while they're on-site, providing better service to customers.
3. Increase CRM Adoption Rates
People in the field don't always have time to open their laptop, connect to the Internet and then fill in a lengthy form to start an account, update a sales forecast, retrieve newly assigned leads and/or file a service request. After a site visit with a customer or prospect, salespeople often forget the specific details of the meeting and/or forget to update the customer record by the time they return to the office. Yet, for CRM to be the successful collaborative system for salespeople and a forecasting and intelligence tool to provide executive insight, the information it contains must be accurate and up-to-date. The portable always-on nature of a mobile CRM application allows people to work on the spot, with minimal effort, which results in strong user adoption.
4. Improve Forecasting and Business Intelligence
The basis for business intelligence and performance management is that the underlying data in corporate systems—such as CRM and ERP—are up-to-date. If the information in those systems suffers from incomplete or outdated information, then all the reports, dashboards and gadgets in the world won't provide meaningful business performance insight. When salespeople don't take the time to enter forecast and account updates from the field, large chunks of information can be out of date or simply missing. Real-time updates from mobile devices with seamless synchronization ensure that management receives better information for decision-making.
Moving to Mobility
Before you rush your laptop to the dumpster, consider a phased approach by further empowering field salespeople with mobile devices. And before you embark on marrying CRM with these devices, a strategy for realizing the full benefits is critical. A carefully considered mobile CRM strategy will help your company move to the head of the pack in business productivity, and employee/customer satisfaction. And when the day comes in the not so distant future when laptops are as antiquated as mainframe servers, your sales team will be armed and ready
Editor's Note: Read Part II, "Mobile CRM: Seven Steps for Success," of this two-part series to learn how to realize the full benefits of mobile CRM.
Angie Hirata is worldwide director marketing and business development of Maximizer Software Inc., a leading provider of simple customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for desktop, Web, and mobile devices. Contact her at ahirata@maximizer.com.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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