The Importance of Being Mobile
The Smartphone is perhaps one of the greatest introductions of the new millennium (though some may disagree). Web enabled mobile phones have been rising steadily as technological advances have increased speed and decreased price.
Although some may look at smartphones as vanity objects (a bunch of teenagers hanging at the mall Tweeting about Justin Biber, uploading photos to Facebook, etc.), many professionals utilize their smartphones as productivity tools.
Business Productivity On-The-Go
Barton Goldenberg, president and founder of ISM, Inc. released an article about the future of CRM. In it he notes that “Today’s software runs on desktops, laptops, and smartphones, with increasingly ubiquitous access to custom applications making CRM data and customer information readily available, anytime and anywhere.”
What Goldenberg is saying is that if your CRM doesn’t have a mobile app available, you’re basically behind the times.
Having a mobile app of your CRM helps facilitate field sales, out of office business meetings, and can even be helpful during networking events.
According to Nancy Keddy, CEO and Co-Founder of Touch Ahead Software, LLC, “Mobile CRM apps give us access to a limitless number of contacts and additional information and don’t’ require that we store that information on the mobile device.” This is an option that comes in handy when smartphones usually only come equipped with a couple of gigs of hard drive space.
The Bottom Line
If you or your organization is considering implementing a CRM solution, check to make sure there is a mobile component included.
If you already have a CRM and aren’t using a mobile application, contact your system administrator to see if there is one available.
How Deployment of Mobile CRM Can Help Your Business
Because pads of paper aren't enough!
Chances are that your employees already use a smartphone such as a BlackBerry for work. With the ease of mobility and the convenient size of the smartphone and other web-enabled handheld devices, why not choose to make your CRM application accessible on there, as well? Employees who work remotely are able to access client data in a matter of seconds with mobile CRM.
Mobile CRM can be very helpful to your team. Many businesses have employees on-the-go, and yours could very well be one of them. What's surprising is that not as many businesses as you may think have taken advantage of mobile CRM - which is an opportunity for your business to get ahead.
The ability to access client data and manage complex business relationships while out of the office is invaluable. Why not take advantage of the opportunity to increase productivity while improving organization and communication?
Using a CRM application that has mobile capabilities helps you to stay on top of data entry. For example, if you just met with a client, and you agree to set a date for another meeting, you have your CRM at your fingertips. With some solutions that have Outlook and calendaring integrated, you could immediately check what dates and times work for you and enter the appointment right then and there. This decreases the chances that you will forget about your future meeting or forget to put it on your calendar. Many CRM applications allow you to enter your points of contact with a person, whether it is a meeting, phone call, or E-mail. Mobile CRM allows you to enter this information instantly before you get back to the office and while the information is still fresh in your mind.
Mobile CRM is an easy, secure way to get the information you need, when you need it. An interesting statistic is provided by the maker of BlackBerry, Research In Motion. It collaborated with Forrester Research to survey the market for mobile CRM, and they found that more than half of the people who responded to their study lost business opportunities before they made their CRM available on the road, because they couldn't access the information without being in the office.
This is another reason why making CRM available on-the-go is so important. Try not to use lack of time and money as an excuse to not invest in mobile CRM, because the business opportunities that are lost as a result of inaccessible information will cost you time and money in the long-run.