Wednesday, May 17, 2017

What companies should look for in mobile CRMs

The trend towards mobile CRM is unbroken. According to market researchers at IDC, around 35% of the workforce will be classified as “mobile workers” by the end of 2013. With the growing number of mobile employees and home office workers, as well as increasingly flexible working hours, the need for mobile access points to the CRM system of enterprises is growing.


Simple and intuitive


To have all relevant information at the customer's site on site is an immense advantage for the field service. Whether you are a sales representative of industrial companies or financial service providers, pharmaceutical providers or service technicians, they all benefit from mobile access to the CRM system of their company, access to the bundled knowledge about the customer, their needs and their history. To be able to record orders and visit reports immediately is one of the advantages of mobile CRM systems.


Concentration on the essential


In times when we are always available online, mobile access to the CRM system is almost self-evident. For employees who are privately used to using smartphones or tablets, it is only obvious to deal with the new, comfortable end devices in their professional life.


Roles and Processes


No question: mobile CRM increases the efficiency in external service. Wherever quick access to CRM data is needed, where data needs to be found or detected quickly, and where even a digital signature is needed with a touch screen, mobile CRM is the solution.



Native app or Web application?


Mobile CRM for the field


The new devices currently provide for a paradigm shift: away from the laptop to the tablet. The iPad from Apple is already something like the de facto standard among the business tablets. Not by chance. Touch devices are not only lighter and more comfortable, but also - ideally like the iPad - with an especially user-friendly operating concept. And mobile CRM requires just that: simplicity.


A mobile CRM application must be as intuitive as possible. The field staff must quickly and with a minimum of effort, come to the information relevant to his task. In the mobile application it is even expressly a matter of dispensing with functional ballast and reducing the application to essential functions and processes.


The data quality and the quality of the data are improved by the data retrieval and input in real-time on site. The probability that the points discussed in the subsequent acquisition are forgotten is clearly reduced. A faulty allocation of data is largely avoided by direct input. As administrative activities, such as the preparation of visitor reports, are carried out either directly at the customer's premises or during waiting queues (airport, train, taxi), the journey to the office no longer takes place in the evening, and there is also more freedom for strategic planning activities



Focusing on the essentials is also the form factor of the end devices: the screen of the tablet is smaller than a conventional monitor, and the screen of a smartphone is, of course, even smaller. The command of functional concentration is almost self-evident.


Mobile CRM applications, such as the specially developed CRM.pad from update, focus on the essentials while fully exploiting the advantages of the user-friendly iPad operating concept. With context-sensitive navigation and comprehensively customizable areas, modern mobile CRM apps represent processes and data exactly as the user needs them in their specific processes.


A mobile CRM application is also easy to use and particularly efficient by meeting the specific needs of a company. Industry-specific CRM is always an advantage. Companies today expect mobile CRM solutions that map roles and processes and provide the tools that are needed in the industry.


For a sales representative, the CRM app on the tablet can be a presentation tool, while for the service technician the camera is used in its smartphone for damage documentation, which is then deposited directly in the central CRM system. Customizability and flexibility of a mobile CRM application are also important criteria for most companies.


A branch-specific application minimizes the customizing effort and ensures that the solution is quickly productive, but the easier the application can be adapted to the individual needs of a company, the better. Ideally, masks, fields and data areas can be freely configured at any time by the administrator of the company. This also ensures that employees from sales, marketing or service work with their own mobile solution, which optimally takes account of the requirements of their respective roles.


Depending on the application scenario, the criterion of offline capability plays a decisive role in the selection of the mobile CRM solution. Basically, mobile CRM can be realized in the form of a web solution or a native app. A web solution accesses the core system in real-time, but requires an Internet connection. A native app, on the other hand, has the advantage of being available even in places without network coverage.


You then work with a local database and replicated data, which will automatically be synchronized with the core system at the next online connection. If external staff are often employed in places without good network coverage, for example in rural areas, on major construction sites, in large-scale production facilities, or if the pharmacist has to switch off his access to the mobile network in the hospital, the offline capability is of course indispensable >


This also has consequences in the choice of the terminal. A web-based mobile CRM solution is almost completely independent of the terminal, while mobile applications with offline capability are always device- or operating-system-specific. If a company pursues a policy of bringing your own device, a web application is an advantage. If companies want a tablet as a mobile terminal, this is usually a central decision - often for the iPad, the most popular business tablet.


When a company decides on the iPad as the end device, it is well advised to choose a mobile CRM app that really realizes the comfortable iPad operating concept. For many companies it already stands out today that the Tablet could completely replace the laptop in the field service. Prepare visits, maintain contacts, create reports - as simple and efficient as possible: There are many good reasons for mobile CRM on touch devices.

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