Companies in Europe that make client relationship management software (CRM) accessible remotely increase their competitive advantage. This is shown by a study from Forrester Consulting commissioned by Research In Motion (RIM), the manufacturer of the Blackberry.
More than a thousand (IT) executives from companies in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom participated in the study. Revenue growth and more productive employees are the two main reasons for organizations to implement mobile CRM (87 percent). Improving customer service (55 percent) is the third most cited reason.
Customer Satisfaction
This underscores that not only the internal organization benefits from mobile business applications. It also increases customer satisfaction. For field staff, mobile CRM is crucial according to many managers. Because information in the current business environment changes very quickly. Often, the required information is temporarily inaccessible or outdated at the moment field staff leave the office.
Respondents also indicated five advantages of mobile CRM compared to traditional access to information via desktops: improved employee productivity (77 percent), improved customer experience (74 percent), greater customer satisfaction (73 percent), increased efficiency of business processes (73 percent), and reduced CRM costs (63 percent)
Nearly three-quarters of respondents using mobile CRM applications reported that the applications help sales staff work more effectively. Employees can view and update information anytime and anywhere. This provides significant benefits not only for mobile employees but also for office staff. They can now rely on having the most recent data.
More Often
The research is representative of organizations of various sizes across Europe. It shows that large companies (with more than 500 employees) more frequently provide their staff with mobile access to CRM applications, while smaller organizations plan to make CRM applications available on mobile (63 percent).
The benefits of mobile CRM are so significant that two-thirds of companies with mobile CRM applications indicated that they are likely to recommend mobile CRM to other organizations.
The business units that generally use mobile CRM the most are: sales department (63 percent), customer service (60 percent), and field service (51 percent).
Info: www.rim.com
