Mobile CRM

What is mobile CRM?

You should not think that the circle of mobile users of CRM is limited to the sales managers working in "field": mobile access to customer relationship management systems can be necessary for both top managers, and specialists of technical support services, the CEOs and any other managers for whom work with data on clients "on the run" is modern.

To number of original opportunities of mobile CRM, in certain cases very important, work with specific mobile data can belong: adding of the photos taken by the phone camera, the voice records given to GPS.

Penetration of mobile CRM

It is interesting that in Western Europe, according to IDC for 2012, the Customer Relationship Management System are the business applications which are the most used in a mobile format: mobile CRM use 35% of the enterprises of the region.

Experts of IDC note that the growing market of "smart" devices of type of smartphones is one of key drivers for "mobilization" of business software in Western Europe. And use of mobile systems directly influences how the companies begin to work: they become more integrated and mobile, business processes accelerate, and IT departments should support these transformations.

Tendency to "mobilization" CRM confirms also the research Aberdeen Research of 2010: according to analysts of this company, in comparison with 2009 in 2010 the number of the companies industry leaders which increased budgets by mobile sales grew by 2.8%, the "lagging behind" companies – for 1.45%. At the same time were going to increase budgets by mobile sales, for comparison, 3.4% of the polled leading companies and 2% of the "lagging behind" companies.

Data of Forrester Research also confirm that the mobility becomes a key corporate priority. In 2011 47% of the polled companies supported work with mobile devices, and 49% - called it in count key telecommunication initiatives.

The boom in the market of "smartphones" and development of mobile broadband Internet access around the world plays a crucial role for development of mobile CRM technologies. According to Destination CRM, 44% of the companies are going to organize access to the CRM from portable devices. According to BearingPoint for 2011, among the companies using mobile CRM, 60% noted growth of customer satisfaction, 30% - sales growth and 30% - increase in productivity.

Market of mobile CRM

The market of mobile CRM, according to Forrester Research, remains rather fragmentary. Analysts note that the choice of the optimal mobile CRM solution seriously is at a loss need to orient in the large volume of applications of suppliers. Often the choice is aggravated also with technological limits on such projects when the enterprises are limited to support only of certain models of devices or mobile operating systems, and they should select solutions under specifically these platforms.

In particular, are presented at the market:

• A broad spectrum of mobile CRM solutions of the largest CRM of vendors, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle Siebel CRM and Oracle CRM On Demand, Salesforce.com and SAP CRM. The vendors focused on mid-size companies have similar solutions and: CDC Pivotal, Maximizer, SalesLogix and SugarCRM.

• Solutions of other specialized suppliers are also gradually developed as the market is very attractive to vendors. The example of such supplier is Pegasystems company. Also in this row it is possible to note Quofore, Veeva Systems, Cegedim Mobile Intelligence, StayinFront and Update Software AG. There are also independent solutions which are superstructures to large CRM platforms, for example, of CWR Mobility for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

• SaaS of the solution. As mobile applications of the Customer Relationship Management System can be standard ("thin client"), a web or hybrid and also cross-platform. Generally of course, vendors offer applications on the "thin client" models which are downloaded and established on the PC or mobile devices. However development of HTML5 does possible use of applications directly of the browser.

• Mobile middleware of the platform: mobile platforms of the middleware which allow the organizations to use different mobile applications on the most different types of devices belong to them. Examples of such solutions offer Antenna Software, MobileIron, RIM, SAP Sybase, Spring Wireless and Syclo.

In Russia, for example, is mobile the Customer Relationship Management System of domestic development: it is Terrasoft CRM Mobile, mobile versions of amoCRM, "the Monolith: CRM", ASoft iCRM and others.

According to Forrester Research, the largest consultants for implementation of mobile CRM solutions in the world are BearingPoint, Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro.