No matter the approach, mobile CRM gets your dog and pony show on the road.
What’s not to love about anytime, anywhere access to CRM data? The problem is, how do you deliver — and capture — meaningful CRM information using mobile devices?
No matter whether you’re creating a CRM program designed to work on Android smartphones, the iPad, or a Windows desktop, it must hook users. In fact, the best sign of CRM adoption success is when users are begging you for more — whether it’s using mobile CRM to schedule meetings, updating account information on the fly, or accessing business intelligence on the latest high-value opportunities.
To identify the top techniques for achieving this level of mobile CRM user buy-in and program success, I spoke with Todd Goldenberg, Innoveer’s outside sales director, and David Argue, a senior consultant at Innoveer.
Here are their top 5 strategies for benefiting from mobile CRM:
1) Extend CRM To Anywhere
Don’t think of mobile CRM as a carbon copy of Siebel, Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM On Demand, or any other application. Rather, think of mobile CRM as an extension of your primary CRM application. “Mobile CRM is about extending the CRM system — it’s always on, always at your fingertips,” says Argue.
Think about what mobile CRM can do better than some other forms of CRM. “Walking into an account, you can pull up all previous activities historical activities, sales, information, so you’re as sharp as possible,” says Argue. “Or walking out, you can capture everything with great detail, immediately. So instead of settling for 60% recall — later, in the hotel room, after a day filled with multiple calls — you can capture 100% of the essential information, by doing it right away.”
2) Give Users Greater Flexibility
Time is money. So, what happens when your day’s meeting schedule goes bonkers? Say your top salesperson is en route to a major meeting in Chicago, but finds out — only once she lands — that the meeting must be postponed for 24 hours. What to do?
With mobile access to the CRM system, she can hit the ground running, scheduling other meetings on the fly. As Argue says, “take a tragic business cancellation and turn it into an undiscovered business opportunity.”
3) Deliver Combined Data, Mixing CRM And BI
Who says mobile CRM just needs to pipe in information from the CRM system? For example, Innoveer customer New York Life combines CRM data with other essential information, then delivers it via a mobile application, built with Pyxis Mobile, a mobile app development platform. “Brokers need analytical information, so Pyxis is pulling from both Siebel and their BI tool,” says Goldenberg. “They need that information instantly — and the more information they have, the better they can sell and up-sell and service customers.”
4) Mobilize Marketing And Service Too
Mobile CRM doesn’t just apply to sales teams. Mobile CRM is also a no-brainer on conference floors — for marketing teams — and in the field for service and support. On the service front, for example, Argue says that one large high-technology firm, an Innoveer client, employed mobile CRM to make its in-house support team more proactive and efficient.
“The support team roamed about a large property — constantly on the east side of the campus, or the west, always on the go. So they used a mobile device to see where they were going, who they were meeting with, and to see service ticket updates on fly,” he says. That way, if a server room suddenly caught fire, personnel could be immediately rerouted to deal with the high-priority issue.
5) Match Technology To Actual Requirements
Don’t start by selecting mobile CRM technology. Instead, “poke and prod at requirements first,” says Argue. For example, if your organization only needs to extend a single CRM application, consider using the mobile version of your current application, such as Mobile Sales Assistant for Oracle CRM On Demand or Mobile Lite from Salesforce.
Evaluate your organization’s the device landscape too. For example, if you’re an iPhone shop, see what’s available via Apple’s App Store, which despite its consumer reputation does a mean business in enterprise-scale apps too.
For more robust requirements, or when combing multiple sources of information, also consider Pyxis Mobile. While it costs more, the application excels at combining multiple sources of data, such as CRM and analytics data generated from a data warehouse. “Oftentimes the most valuable data you get is from combined system — CRM and business intelligence, via the data warehouse and analytics — so you can truly display analytical data, rather than just CRM data,” says Goldenberg.
Learn More
Mobile CRM success begins by ensuring that your overall CRM program is succeeding by meeting your business requirements. To help make your CRM program more successful, review our “top 10” marketing, sales or service steps to see how your program compares to best practices and our benchmarks.
Also, just making CRM go mobile is no panacea. Instead, you’ll need to entice users to share CRM data by giving them something in return. With a little give and take, however, you’ll have the makings of a world-class CRM program.
