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Site Development & WAP versions: Geoff Dennis
News by permission of Tony Dennis's Mobile Insight, and the Inquirer 
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 Mobile CRM is high priority says RIM
Posted bytonydennis on Thursday, June 25 @ 13:08:10 CEST
Crazy as it may seem, 58 per cent of respondents to a study commissioned by RIM from Forrester reported that putting CRM apps onto mobile phones was a key part of their IT strategy for 2009. There appears to be an interesting mix of factors driving this motivation. Fear of losing a competitive edge is certainly one of them. However, I detect other influences. For example, built-in GPS is one of them. It's one thing providing a field engineer or salesperson with the name, address and number for the next assignment. Now, they can use the phone to get there, too.
Crazy as it may seem, 58 per cent of
respondents to a study commissioned by RIM from Forrester reported
that putting CRM apps onto mobile phones was a key part of their IT
strategy for 2009.
There appears to be an interesting mix
of factors driving this motivation. Fear of losing a competitive edge
is certainly one of them. However, I detect other influences. For
example, built-in GPS is one of them.
It's one thing providing a field
engineer or salesperson with the name, address and number for the
next assignment. Now, they can use the phone to get there, too.
Plus – despite an apparent reluctance
to stress this fact – higher data throughput speeds are helping. It
improves browser refresh times and helps to speed up data
synchrnisation.
These findings were discussed with
attending journalists by the report's author, Bill Band; RIM's own
Rory O'Neil; and Kris MacKenzie fro SAP.
You'd expect SAP to say that the
majority of its customers are looking at or have already implemented
mobile CRM, but Kris actually admitted it had improved SAP employees
own performance by ten per cent, too.
RIM was naturally singing the praises
of its own Crackberries as the obvious device for mobile CRM. The key
message here was that its got security sussed completely – not just
data being held on the device by over the network as well.
The three also had an excellent slant
on the inherent ability to 'push' information to a Crackberry. This
can be done automatically at key times. So, the mobile worker doesn't
get bothered over the weekend and the accusation of creating
'Crackberry Dads' is diminished.
Obviously, RIM would love IT
departments to standardise on the Crackberry as the supplied mobile
device. However, the panel admitted – if end users prefer to keep
their existing devices (say their iPhones), then the whole point of
mobilising CRM will fail due to consumer resistance.
For those who love to browse the
key figures and key finding, the report is actually entitled
'Empowering the Workforce: Mobile CRM in Europe.' Have a look on the
Forrester site http://www.forrester.com.
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