Mobile Technology For Sales Force Automation

These days every company is getting more inclined towards technology and mobile professionals are traveling places far from their corporate campuses either with their laptops or smartphones. With the increase in ubiquity of Wi-Fi enabled places and high speed of cellular networks, the road warriors depends more on real time access of information whether it is email, calendars, charts or any other corporate information system.

 As a result of so much traveling and onsite work, sales force people are geared up with tablets, smartphones and at the same time employees who work at places like construction sites, manufacturing plants and more are equipped with rugged mobile phones for getting real time updates. With the help of mobility devices employees can update and get information in real time because of which data redundancy decreases, accuracy increases and burden of carrying stack of manuals decreases.

 If we see throughout, business locations like hospitals, retail stores, factories etc mobile workers use light weight handheld devices which are linked to the local WLANs for real time communication and access to the information. Such solutions have helped businesses and workers to raise their standards.
 With the advancement in technology, firms with mobile sales people have been facing lot many hurdles as a result of which they need to realign and change their strategies as the market changes. With the changing time SFA applications have also changed and now it"s all about real time updates and data filling. Even though there are certain features that are always a major part of the SFA applications but the companies need to redesign these apps according to the market trend in their particular field of work. The most common hurdles are

 Focus "" Time and money wastage on uninterested prospects and less focus on best prospects and sales team ends up spending time on all the prospects.
 Access "" Customer satisfaction is bad sometimes because sales people do not have access to certain information which is only available in the office"s database and due to this the customers are not satisfied.
 As a result of these two major issues Mobile Sales Force Automation was introduced.

 Expansion in Portfolio of capabilities

 Quick Access to Information "" People in sales need to have critical facts and figures if they are on the field so as to close a deal and if by any chance they do not have adequate and latest facts and figures they might end up losing the deal. With mobile SFA applications sales people can have access to critical information in real time.

 Shortened Sales Cycle "" During meeting with the customer the sales people can have the information on product, inventory checks can be done and quotations can be given at the time of meeting itself. This leaves a good impression of the employee on the customer. With mobile apps option of manual data entry into CRM or ERP gets eliminated. This allows in shortening of the sales cycle, accurate information is gathered leading to customer satisfaction and increase in revenue.

 Sync Capability "" The mobile SFA has the capability of data sharing and merging new and updated information between offline users and the mobile server.

 Always On Sometimes Connected "" Mobility platforms are important as compared to the laptops because during a call the employee needs to save time in front of the prospects and with laptops time is wasted.

 Emerging trends in Mobile Capabilities
 Integration
 Operating System
 Deployment platform
 Third party application availability
 Asset Management
 Connectivity
 Battery Life
 Data Capture
 Voice telephony

 Future Technology Accelerators
 Tablet PC
 Voice
 Extending into Field Analytics
 RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)

 Why Mobile SFA

 Business is conducted on a National or Global Level
 More than 30 to 35% of the time by sales people is spent outside the office premises
 Business depends on quick and informed decisions from people who are frequently on the road.
 Sales professionals need to have quick access to information and provide quick answers to the customers when they are on the call.

 Nimbleness is a competitive advantage for the sales professional.

 Mobile sales field force automation has helped business grow. They provide quick information access to the sales professionals at the back end, shortens the life cycle, gathers and provides accurate information, improves customer satisfaction and increases revenue. Companies can opt for either iPhones or iPADs for SFA app development or the same can be made on Android phones and tablets, the technology can also be leveraged on other mobile platforms. Choose the platform according to the convenience of the company and the sales people.