If you work in sales, you are most likely spending several days a week away from the office and your ability to access information remotely is key to your getting the job done. The mobile workforce, defined as people who spend more than 20 percent of their time away from the office, is growing rapidly and will surpass 1.2 billion or one-third of the global workforce in 2013, according to IDC.
Sales cycle efficiency and customer responsiveness drive investments in mobile apps
Mobility extends to every corner of the enterprise, but mobile professionals (46 percent) and field sales force (21 percent) are the largest user groups, according to a report from the Yankee Group.
"The potential of mobilizing your sales force is huge, but it is crucial that you look at the business case and evaluate what applications will provide the best return on investment," says Henrik Nielsen, sales and marketing manager at ConsafeMobility. "Most organizations expect a positive ROI within 18 months."
According to the Yankee Group, customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) are among the most desirable mobile applications to deploy in the next 24 months. The same report also shows that the investments in mobile apps are primarily driven by the need to improve customer responsiveness, worker productivity, and operational efficiencies.
"Before, the mobilization of the workforce was focused on task workers. Now we see a shift toward information workers such as business executives, sales managers, and sales reps," explains Nielsen. "Instead of implementing applications on rugged Windows Mobile devices, companies are looking at how they can leverage their employees’ existing smartphones and tablet computers."
Empowering your field sales
"Accessing information from a laptop is not convenient or efficient when you travel and many companies still rely on manual and paper-based processes," explains Nielsen. "During travel, administrative work tasks often are postponed until the end of the day, causing poor visibility of order status, inventory, and customer issues."
Smartphones and iPads extend the reach of CRM and other enterprise systems, enabling your field sales force to take care of administrative work tasks during downtime. Sales reps and sales executives can update the CRM system, place and track orders, monitor inventory, and submit expense reports and travel requests while waiting in the airport or between meetings. This dramatically increases productivity and reduces administrative work, maximizing the face time with your customers.
Empowered with real-time access to information about order history, shipment and payment status, and service history including open service tickets, sales reps can be proactive and resolve problems before they are even visible to the customer.
During meetings, sales reps can use iPads to browse product catalogues with full access to price lists and discount schedules. Customers can review and sign contracts directly on the screen, and it is even possible to accept credit card payments. Invoices can be issued and emailed to the customer immediately, dramatically improving cash flow while reducing administrative work. If the customer is reporting a problem, the sales rep can submit a service ticket directly via the mobile device.
"With all information readily available, deals can be closed faster and companies can respond faster to customer feedback," explains Nielsen. "Sales reps can quickly alert management of concerns or product back-up issues. Problems that took days to resolve before can now be solved in minutes."
On a management level, sales managers and other executives benefit from increased visibility of sales activities and access to productivity and profitability metrics directly from their smartphone or iPad. This enables them to respond faster and more intelligently to deviations, ensuring customer satisfaction and profitability.
Virtually anywhere, sales managers can receive and distribute sales leads, track opportunities, and monitor sales team quotas. Administrative work such as expense reports and travel requests can be reviewed and approved without starting up a laptop, and collaboration among team members can be dramatically improved.
The challenges of mobility
As companies start to mobilize CRM and other enterprise systems, it is crucial that they work with a partner that understands the special requirements of mobile applications.
"Mobile apps have to be intuitive and adjusted to the smaller screen size," explains Nielsen. "Companies need to analyze what information and apps are the most critical to access from the field. It is important to make sure that the interface minimizes clicking and scrolling."
With more employees using their personal smartphones and iPads for work-related tasks, IT organizations are struggling with how to secure, manage, and deliver mobile apps to many different types of platforms. Yet another challenge is how to keep the business information separate from the personal information on the device.
ConsafeMobility, powered by the Antenna mobile platform, extends CRM and other enterprise systems to the fingertips of your mobile sales force and makes them accessible from any smartphone or tablet computer. The platform makes it easy to integrate with any enterprise system or other third-party data source.
ConsafeMobility provides the entire mobile solution, including hardware, applications, system integration with CRM and other enterprise systems, service, and support.
"Unlike most of our competitors, ConsafeMobility not only supports the Windows Mobile platform, but gives the flexibility to deploy applications on multiple platforms, such as iOS, Android, and BlackBerry," explains Nielsen. "Our solution also enables you to separate your company apps from the personal information on the device, which is critical from a data-security standpoint."
Sources
The IDC study, Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009-2013 Forecast
The Mobility Outlook 2011 by Mobile Enterprise Magazine and Yankee Group
2010 Enterprise Mobility IT Decision Maker by Yankee Group
Transforming Infrastructure and Transforming Applications Survey by Yankee Group
Diagrams from Mobile Enterprise magazine The Mobility Outlook 2011