As mobile technology continues to grow in scope and size, users from various industries and verticals are leveraging it to improve customer relationships, engaging at various touchpoints across the path-to-purchase on the devices and platforms that their audience prefers. Yet, the same functionality that makes sales and marketing simpler is equally beneficial within the workplace. Equipping employees with up-to-date mobile tools not only helps them campaign and serve better—it helps them perform better overall, ensuring they have up-to-the-minute access to the business knowledge and resources they need to stay on top of their game.
According to a recent industry report, 79 percent of companies cite enhancing their sales reps’ ability to perform work on a mobile device as a top priority in the coming year—and for good reason. The same report found that employees are two times as likely to think Salesforce makes their jobs easier when they can access the software from their mobile device. What does this mean for executives? It means investing in mobile technology isn’t simply following a fad—it’s laying the groundwork to strategically equip your teams to serve better, respond smarter, and perform at their top capacity.
Yet, while the benefits of mobile implementation are clear—improved collaboration and teamwork, streamlined employee and customer connection, and improved business speed to name a few—knowing exactly what type of strategy to begin can be a challenge, especially with so many options on the market today. Industry experts offer the following tips for getting started, and sustaining a mobile plan that ensures long-term growth both today and in the future:
Ensure Integration with Existing Processes
Mobile is an excellent platform, but isn’t intended or designed to replace existing business applications. Finding a solution that fits seamlessly with your existing investments (such as CRM software) is key to maximizing your ROI. In the end, it should supplement and support your systems, not create an additional silo of data your employees have to mine through to locate what they need.
Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize
For a mobile strategy to work, it must be at the forefront of employee’s minds, and always available at their fingertips. This means investing in the training and knowledge sharing required to bring your departments up to speed on device use, maintenance, and support, and encouraging active use throughout the workplace. Not simply a last minute add-on to existing strategies, successful mobile implementations keep functionality running as often as possible, making the most of every opportunity for engagement.
Take the Time to Review and Revise Your Strategy
It’s no secret that the technology landscape is never static—it’s always changing and growing and shifting in new directions depending on customer taste, business environments, and marketplace demand. To this end, a mobile strategy must be a living plan—reviewed and revised periodically to ensure it’s still relevant, applicable, and practical. What worked at first might need a little tweaking now, and that’s perfectly OK—it means your business is growing with the times.
In all, implementing a mobile strategy simply means taking your proven business processes, and placing them directly in the palm of your employees’ hands, giving them the power and control to take their operations on the road, into the field, and over the vast frontier that is the Internet of Things (IoT). Creating a plan that takes into account their needs and preferences, as well as the shape of the current business environment, is critical to a successful deployment, helping ensure that no matter where your workforce goes—it grows.
Source:
Koopman, Gene-Michael, “The State of Salesforce Success Series: Enterprise Mobile Strategy,” Bluewolf, http://www.bluewolf.com/bluewolf-now/state-salesforce-success-series-enterprise-mobile-strategy.
NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT
