Taking CRM on the Road: Top Trends and Prediction for Mobile App Development and User Engagement

In today’s era of technology, increasingly defined by the explosive growth of the Internet of Things, helping teams stay connected across devices and channels isn’t just good business sense—it’s essential to staying competitive and profitable in an massively interconnected “workplace,” wherever that might be. At the heart of this digital transformation is the mobile app, a media tool that’s revolutionizing how employees communicate, share knowledge across departments, and reach out to customers—and from the most basic to the incredibly complex, users are creating and disseminating these solutions at breakneck pace. According to the U.S. Mobile App Report by comScore, mobile app usage grew 52 percent from June 2013 to June 2014, compared to desktop usage, which increased by one percent—total U.S. digital media time spent jumped 24 percent.

One driving force behind the flourishing mobile app market is its application to CRM strategies—helping employees manage and maintain both internal and outward-facing relationships with ease, so they can communicate in real-time with teammates, prospects, and customers, all with the click of a button. Yet, with so many design options and user considerations, creating the “perfect” mobile app to optimize your CRM operations may appear daunting at first. The new Salesforce eBook, “4 Tech Trends That Will Shape I.T. App Dev in 2015,” outlines top mobile app trends predicted for this year, as well as guidelines to help employees craft and deploy the apps that make the most sense for their business and are designed for long-term sustainability. The following recommendations capture some of the top-level insight Salesforce provides in the eBook.

Successful Apps Are Fluid

A “one-and-done” approach to mobile app development may result in solutions that feel stale after a short period of time, resulting in lower adoption rates. Employees and customers are constantly changing demands and expectations, and keeping pace with their requirements requires apps that are frequently and consistently updated to incorporate user feedback. The most competitive apps are those with quick iterations and decreased cycle times, requiring an IT staff dedicated to building, monitoring, and improving solutions at lightning speed.

Successful Apps Empower Users

As the next generation of Platform as a Service continues to grow, even users without in-depth development knowledge can create apps on the go, leveraging quick-start tools and wizards to turn their best ideas into innovation. Once the apps are created, solutions such as the enterprise-wide Salesforce component framework make it easy for employees to expand and repurpose them into new solutions with ease.

Successful Apps Incorporate Actionable Insights

Every touch point your company interacts across, from applications, to devices, to connected systems, provides a valuable opportunity to capture information that can be used to drive more effective and strategic business operations. By connecting data across the IT environment, mobile apps allow employees to consolidate and make sense of the disparate insights, which can then be used to create mobile apps that are more engaging, user-friendly, and mapped to customer preference.

As the concept of “office” continues to broaden, workers can now be productive from virtually anywhere, requiring solutions robust enough to support an always-on workforce. Today’s mobile apps aren’t just supplemental add-ons to traditional business functions. They’re incredibly robust, tailored to user needs, and continually upgraded, ensuring that no matter where your teams go—they’re equipped with tools just as agile and innovative as they are.

To learn more about how partnering with our seasoned CRM consultants can deliver this functionality to your business, please contact any member of our consulting team at [email protected]. We also encourage you to contact Tokara’s VP of Business Development, Mark Fillingim, directly at +1 972-719-0213.

Sources:

“4 Tech Trends That Will Shape I.T. App Dev in 2015,” Salesforce 1 Platform E-Book, https://secure.sfdcstatic.com/assets/pdf/misc/Tech-Trends-Ebook.pdf.

“The U.S. Mobile App Report, “ comScore, 2014 Whitepaper.

Tokara Solutions

As President and founder of Tokara Solutions, Shawn Grant has over 20 years of experience in enterprise CRM design and delivery. Shawn remains instrumental in providing CRM and Marketing Automation products and services for companies in the Financial Services, Manufacturing, Public Utilities, Home Builders/Real Estate Services, and Land Title Industry. Consequently, he continues to look forward to providing his knowledge within the CRM industry by writing for our company blog. From integration to implementation, Shawn’s unmatched CRM experience provides us with exceptional insight through Tokara Solutions’ blogs.

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