In the recent years, we have seen rapid advancements and a significant
growth in mobile technologies and their usage worldwide. Mobile Customer
Relationship Management has emerged with many benefits to the organizations, simplifying
business tasks as well as saving operational cost and time. Companies are realizing
the need of mobility for attaining higher value from their existing investments
in CRM systems, allowing faster and precise data collection and enhanced
decision-making.
Mobile CRM enables enterprises explore business through their
workforce on field like sales and service teams, to access key information
through mobile devices like smartphones and tablets on their move. It also
helps the top level executives and senior managers to access business critical
information like order details, operational stats, performance reports, etc; and
to approve requests on their mobile devices round the clock.
With such significance attached to a mobile CRM system, companies need
to consider the following critical factors to employ a successful mobile CRM
solution:
Support Device Diversity
The usage of a diverse range of mobile devices by employees of
organizations poses a challenge for the IT departments while deploying
enterprise mobility solutions. An ideal mobile CRM solution should allow
employees to use any mobile device like an iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android,
Windows based phone or tablets. It should be flexible to support any device OSs
to carry out seamless transaction. However instead of offering a common layout
for all devices, it’s better when they adapt to the look and feel of device that
users carry.
Off-line Functionality
Access to customer data, product information and documents at the right
time has become a crucial factor for every customer-centric business. Sales
professionals and business managers use mobile CRM solution
on their handheld devices every time they need it—meetings, events, travel, etc
regardless of time and convenience of internet.
Mobile CRM should provide access to customer data or other information
whenever and more importantly wherever needed. They should be designed such
that users can always access to the right information at the right moment be it
online or off-line. This improves the customer interactions, business decision-making
and the productivity.
Open Standards Support Integration
Field professionals not only need access to customer information but
also to various other support aspects like product information, sale promotions/offers,
service requests and order status. Thus selecting a system which supports
integration with a variety of back-end systems like ERP, intranet, legacy,
database and e-mail is imperative. It is also wise to opt for the ones that support
open standards and be flexible to keep-up with the ever changing device
landscape.
Security is Key
Mobile CRM data is a company’s critical asset. It contains
confidential information of the company’s customer relationships, partners,
suppliers, sales data, product details, some legal documents and crucial data
subject to government regulations. Such information is accessed by sales
professionals and other workers and is to be totally secured.
With the field professionals having to travel all around and facing
severe security threats, mobile CRM applications must ensure enterprise level
security through validation, encryption and central, policy-based control.
User-friendliness
Mobile CRM Applications serve their purpose by being user-friendly and
easy to operate while accessing data. If the application is hard to use and
doesn’t respond swiftly on the handheld devices, it will be of no use during a
client interaction.
Mobile CRM applications must be easy to navigate and respond promptly
to any queries, with little or no training to the users. User interface of such
applications make a huge impact with the users and it must comply with the
organization’s unique process and workflow.
Improved User-functionality
Mobile CRM helps to increase business sales opportunities and lead
generation by interacting with customers anywhere anytime with valid data at a single
touch point. Applications help users even better when they are constantly updated.
Employees must be able to revise their visit reports, add new findings of
customers and make them up-to-date on their mobile devices.
Latest Technology Upgrades—Social
& Location CRM
Social
CRM is the best way to connect and engage customers in the CRM process.
Instead of marketing messages to customers through email blast or mailers, it
is better to update them on social media within CRM. In the current social trend, social media helps
to build stronger customer relationship and acts as a medium to provide
solution to customers’ needs.
Another trending aspect in mobile CRM is location-based intelligence. Social
and location-specific data help professionals to gather and access more details
about their customers. Integrating these advanced technologies on one unified environment
provides new insight into the profile of customers and prospects on the spot, thus
adding more value to CRM process.
