What if you could instantly track all of your customer contacts sales processes conveniently from any smartphone or tablet device, fully integrated with your desktop and available though any web browser? You could do business anywhere, anytime.
Actually, those capabilities are already in place for many corporations as well as small and medium-sized businesses. Mobile customer relationship management (CRM) is now not only possible, but increasingly, essential for businesses on the move.
From a big-picture standpoint, the technological advantages of CRM today can seem almost magical compared to what was possible just ten years ago. Business owners and managers can check the real-time status of deals or customer interactions, or even execute an email marketing campaign while in line at their cafe, in the lobby of a prospect’s office, or from their child’s soccer game. Naturally, as companies have had to become increasingly nimble to survive and to attract top talent to thrive, these kinds of capabilities are needed more and more.
The availability of all of this information leads to convergences of opportunity. I explained how this works in a recent podcast:
I think it’s important for an organization to have a centralized repository of all of this data and information…For example, the updates from a mobile interface should be able to drive a business process with improved speed and agility. There should be sufficient accuracy in that update to create the kind of custom engagement experience that is being demanded today. What you don’t want is all that information lying in different areas of the organization so that you cannot get a cohesive response out to a customer.
How and Why Mobile CRM Will Evolve
As industry players, we’ve had a first-hand view of what businesses have been using (and what they’ve been demanding) from their CRM. We first noticed the opportunity and helped create this trend when we made our first foray into mobile CRM with smartphones and BlackBerry. In response to market demand, Maximizer’s CRM can be accessed on the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android and any other smartphone or tablet computer. They have also added social media features including integration with LinkedIn. Users even have access to a contact’s LinkedIn profile directly from the CRM contact record, letting executives and employees integrate social networks for business while on the move as well.
CRM software vendors will continue to add new capabilities for companies to conveniently access the information they need to do deals on the go. Ultimately, this reduces the cost of the overall sales process by speeding it up; it also allows for more opportunities to generate revenue.
For instance, if a salesperson understands from checking the customer’s status that their client will soon be overdue for a license renewal or product upgrade, then they can choose to add these points to what might have been a more limited one-time sale. Mobile CRM isn’t just a cost-cutter, but a value-adder that an increasing number of forward-thinking companies can’t do without.
It is a value adder as I do believe seamless email integration is as well. People are seeking easier, most streamlined and within the tools they are already using. The requests we get at our CRM company, KarmaCRM, center all around that type of customization.
Over the past decade Social media played a big and vital part on the advancement of businesses and how people communicate online and offline. Social science combined with better and Easy CRM wins the competition.