Infosys-Oracle Blog : Mobile CRM is not a choice, but a necessity for Enterprises

Guest post by
Shanmugam Gnanasambandam, Principal Consultant, Infosys

Today, enterprises have CRM systems/applications implemented to support their Marketing, Sales and Service functions, which have matured, over the last two decades as an On-Premise Application and also being offered now as an On Demand Application, for access through Desktops/Laptops.

The significant progress of mobile internet, which includes availability of a wide range of affordable smart phones/tablets, high speed internet connectivity on mobile devices and users becoming more and more tech savvy, has created a keen interest in the Mobile CRM space.

Enterprises are keen to explore Mobile CRM for enabling their field forces like Sales and Service teams to access important customer information through their mobile devices (mostly smart phones), on the move. On the other hand the CXOs and Senior Managers need key business information like, customer prospect/order details, operational statistics, performance reports and approval requests, to be accessed through their mobile devices (preferably tablets), to empower them to promptly serve their Customers and to rapidly respond to their Team Members and Partners.

Mobile CRM has a wide range of application areas for different industry verticals like, Banking/Finance/Insurance, Hi-Tech, Retail/Consumer Goods, Telecom, Energy/Utilities, Healthcare, Manufacturing, to name a few. In terms of the CRM functional areas, Mobile CRM offers handy applications like Mobile Sales Assistant, Mobile Field Service Application, Mobile Business Intelligence and Mobile Self Service, to name a few, which are truly beneficial to the employees, partners and customers of an organization.

Enterprises can work with their technology partners/consultants and evolve their mobility strategy, explore various solution options and then plan to implement it, in the near future, to remain competitive in their own market place.

To gain confidence and comfort feel, enterprises can adapt a phase wise solution implementation approach, which could start with a simple proof of concept, which can be tried and tested with the target users for a specific period of time. Then based on the end user feedback, this proof of concept solution could be fine-tuned and developed further into a full-fledged solution, for final deployment.

Some of the critical success factors for selecting and deploying enterprise mobility solutions like Mobile CRM are - Support for Mobile Device Diversity, User Friendly/Rich User Experience on Mobile Devices, Ease of Solution Deployment, Scalability and Good Performance on Thin Client / Thick Client based mobile applications.

While the CRM Package vendors are coming up with their own mobile enablement solutions, there are Mobility Solution vendors offering Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms, which facilitates enterprises to quickly mobile enable their CRM applications.

Instead of looking at Mobile CRM as an option, this is the right time for enterprises to consider it as a necessity and explore/deploy Mobile CRM solutions, to enable, rather empower their employees, partners and customers, to access and act on vital information, on the move. The benefits of Mobile CRM for an enterprise like - increased employee/partner productivity, enhanced customer satisfaction and business/revenue growth, would justify their investment.

Kindly share your thoughts, on this subject...

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Comments

Good article showcasing the next generation CRM model and definitely there will be the need for online and offline capability through service delivery platforms.

Posted by: Dilip Diascore | October 19, 2011 5:06 AM

Thanks for the encouring feedback Dilip. Yes, there would be a good potential for both Online and Offline based Mobile Applications in the Field Sales and Service space. While online apps while need support for various mobile browsers and good network connectivity, offline apps, enable the field force, to work offline, even when they are out of the network connectivity, thereby improving their productivity.

Posted by: Shanmugam Gnanasambandam | October 20, 2011 3:15 PM