The ultimate road warrior productivity tool

by Mario Apicella

April 17, 2001 —

ROAD WARRIORS of all stripes lean on e-mail, cell phones, and PDAs not just to keep up with the office but to maintain relationships with their clients. But taking care of customers requires having more information on hand than names and numbers, so many companies have started implementing CRM (customer relationship management) solutions.

CRM software can automatically assign new leads and create to-do lists for a prompt follow-up. New sales orders can be entered into the system immediately after a meeting with the customer. When the representative is in the office, the desktop provides the link to stay in touch with the company databases; whereas on the road, that link is usually replaced by a laptop equipped with the CRM client.

The new wave of CRM applications for wireless devices promises to make accessing CRM on the road even easier. Protocols such as WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and WML (Wireless Markup Language) provide connectivity and content delivery as well as formatting capabilities for wireless devices, similar to what HTTP and HTML offer for wire-bound clients.

Better yet, the new generation of smart phones, such as the Nokia 7100 that runs custom applications on top of its traditional capabilities, and more sophisticated PDAs, such as the Palm VII with wireless connectivity, make custom applications and contextual wireless Web connectivity a reality.

Wireless CRM

BUSINESS CASE

CRM plus wireless devices can be the ultimate combination for road warriors. The implementation may involve a significant investment, but companies can expect increased revenues and a better customer support structure.

TECHNOLOGY CASE

Creating the technical infrastructure to implement and support CRM applications on wireless devices will expose your technicians to unfamiliar new technologies. Training plans and help desk support policies should be re-evaluated to accommodate the new requirements.

PROS

+ Wire-free connectivity permits instant CRM transactions

+ Less expensive than laptop-based alternatives

+ More efficient sales and support structure

CONS

- Choice of devices limited by CRM vendors' offerings

- Technology still evolving

- Potential high costs for deployment and support

At the same time, many CRM vendors have extended their products to support wireless clients. Thanks to the combination of wireless and CRM technologies, PDAs and other handheld devices have become likely alternatives to laptop computers for running corporate applications.

Not surprisingly, 10 percent of the 500 readers we polled in the InfoWorld CRM Survey indicated that they have already implemented wireless CRM applications, and 17 percent have definite plans for deployment next year. In fact, the new generation of wireless gadgets loaded with CRM can produce substantial savings in administrative costs, and by improving your sales force's connectivity, they'll make your company more responsive to customers' needs.

The list of CRM applications that offer wireless clients is a long one. Many CRM vendors, including FrontRange Solutions (formerly Goldmine), Interact (formerly SalesLogix), Oracle, Neteos, PeopleSoft, Pivotal, Siebel, and Upshot, have extended their clients to wireless devices. The CRM vendors that are not already offering a wireless offering will likely do so soon.

As anticipated, their offerings are diverse. Most CRM vendors, including Interact and Neteos, provide specific clients for the smart devices; others, such as Pivotal's Anywhere, offer a server-based solution that delivers CRM applications to a Web browser, without a client to install. Obviously, the latter approach simplifies deployment, but could generate compatibility problems with new browser versions.

Some vendors offer the small-device edition of their client at no additional cost. Others price it separately, which creates an additional entry in your budget for software. You should also consider replacing older devices, which may not be capable of supporting the new applications or meeting the connectivity requirements.

Prepare also to reconcile technical requirements with company policies. For example, if PDAs and cellular phones are considered personal items the company doesn't pay for, you may want to moddify the policy and enforce corporate standards for acquisition and support.

You may consider having the company budget absorb the cost of the new devices and connectivity fees. Depending on policy considerations, you may want to allow your salespeople to keep their personal cellular phones and supply them with company-supported, CRM-capable wireless devices.

New devices aren't the only expenses wireless CRM imposes. When you also factor in training as well as the cost of creating or extending your support infrastructure, the impact of wireless CRM on your budget grows.

However significant the financial impact, most problems can be managed with a few clearly written company policies. More worrisome are the difficulties that a new technology such as wireless communications poses: Wireless CRM's evolving state threatens to make today's choices rapidly obsolete. Disagreement on standards among telecom providers can limit the geographic reach of your connections, and security remains uncertain.

When asked to name the major obstacles to their wireless CRM projects, the IT leaders we surveyed bemoaned a lack of standards and difficulties securing communications. A significant 25 percent cannot find a compelling business reason to deploy wireless CRM.

If your reps make frequent trips to visit customers, the additional cost of implementing a wireless solution should be balanced by increased customer satisfaction, more efficient business processes, and a boost in employee morale. Furthermore, if your employees currently use laptops to run the CRM client, you can achieve a significant cost savings by replacing them with smaller, less expensive machines, which are easier to maintain.

Understandably, due to some input and graphical limitations, adopting these new devices may not be always possible or practical. You will have to decide according to your specific application requirements.

For example, entering scads of data can be challenging, even on the latest omnipresent Palm VII because it lacks a built-in keyboard and requires users to either scribble Graffiti or tap in single characters with the stylus. Employees can simplify that task with an add-on keyboard.

Another obvious limitation of small devices is their graphic capabilities: Complex graphics don't show well. As technology evolves, these machines will offer better graphics. Future versions of the Palm OS promise support for higher resolutions, but for now, you'll have to make due with what's available. If your company is in a business environment that can't wait, you might have to bite the bullet and trade weight and size for the better graphics and easier input of a Windows CE device.

On the positive side, having an immediate Web connection at your road warriors' fingertips opens a myriad of possibilities, such as getting instant driving directions or finding the closest auto-repair shop, features that are not necessarily related to CRM but that can make their lives a lot easier.

If your reps can endure its limitations, a Web-enabled, CRM-capable wireless device can allow them to communicate more frequently with company headquarters. This, in turn, will improve your company's image, shorten your response time to customers' demands, and ultimately improve the efficiency of your sales and support structure. Such machines provide almost limitless freedom to communicate and take care of business from anywhere. This is a business advantage that you cannot afford to give your competitors.

InfoWorld