Sales on the go- Part 1
Some of the technology based mega-trends, that affect the way consumers and businesses interact with each other, of this decade were social and mobile. Of these, mobility trends were that of rapidly increasingly adoption of a new generation of ‘smartphones’ that are now essentially a computer in your pocket. These smartphones usually come with a pretty powerful processor (mostly upwards of 500MHz nowadays), touch interface, email and web browsing, 3G data technology (not in all countries or regions yet) and most importantly apps that might be developed by third parties and available from a central app store.
One of the revolutions that the culmination of these technologies enable is that now a smartphone equipped with the right apps has the potential to be your office-on-the-go. Other revolutions are of course the new worlds opened for consumers ranging from mCommerce, productivity, location based services all the way to social gaming.
The biggest bang-for-the-buck (aka ROI) that companies foresee from these technologies are the usual highly mobile culprits – i.e. sales and service personnel. However, in my opinion, there is also a long tail of applications that will cascade on top of each other to make it eventually viable for most people in the organization equipping themselves with smartphones equipped with a bunch of these connected applications.
In the case of Sales Force Automation, this presentation from Sybase builds a great case for their mobilization via the Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM. A few highlights:
“According to Yankee Group, reps spend 74% of their time on non–revenue generating activities….
… Close to 2/3 of the companies surveyed reported 20% or better improvement in all four of these key metrics:
- Increase face to face selling time
- Eliminate redundant activities
- Increase win rates and lead close rates
- Increase forecast accuracy
All as a direct result of implementing mobile sales force automation tools. They also reported a 20% or more decrease in administrative time….”
I hope this blog collects some of the thoughts about SFA mobility in 2010 and whets your appetite for more details about the Sybase Mobile Sales solution.