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CRM on the go

The mCRM market is still at a nascent stage in the country, but has great potential, given the kind of benefits that it brings to the table, writes Varun Aggarwal

If you look at the global market, CRM applications are fast catching up on the mobile side, complementing front-end software on laptops/PCs. Indian companies need to gear up for such solutions to gain a competitive edge and push their marketing, sales force and CRM to the phone.

More Indians use mobile phones every year. The country witnessed a 54% y-o-y growth in subscriber base, adding over 100 million new users. With the mobile penetration level having exceeded 25%, considerable growth potential still remains.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the enterprise mobility market in India is worth about Rs 354 crore growing at 30-40% over the past three years. Girish Trivedi, Deputy Director, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan South Asia & Middle East, said, “Some of the key drivers for this growth are the increasing competition to address customer demand, the need to offer better accessibility to sales representatives and most importantly mobile phones becoming computers.”

That said, there is a tremendous potential for mCRM in India and all major CRM players have started offering mCRM products in the market. More businesses across industries are reaching out to more than nine million SMBs in India, increasing the need for salespeople, service reps, and managers to be on the road and all of them have phones.

Benefits of mCRM

Today, sales representatives need to perform common and repetitive tasks quickly, such as managing appointments, collaborating with sales team members, and connecting with customer contacts. Mobile CRM enables users to be effective and productive through easy-to-use, focused collaborative applications on their mobile devices. A mobile CRM solution supports pre-programmed automated prompts reminding users to follow up or enter notes at the end of a conversation, ensuring vital information is stored locally or saved to the CRM application in real-time. Integrated access to leads and opportunities gives sales representatives the information they need at the point of customer engagement to shorten the sales cycle and close deals while on the go.

Prasad Rai, Senior Director, CRM, South East Asia, Oracle Asia Pacific, opined, “Consider also the growing viability of Social CRM solutions that leverage Web 2.0 capabilities to embed third party social networks, blogs, RSS feeds, instant messaging and other Web services directly into their business processes and in-context of their data to ensure that employees have a broader and deeper understanding of their customers and partners. These Social CRM capabilities are also empowering users to organically build purpose-driven social networks to improve internal and external group collaboration and creativity, and to enhance customer relationships.”

According to Doug Farber Vice President Operations, Asia Pacific Salesforce.com, “Mobile CRM tools allow firms to eliminate paper-based processes and prevent duplicate data entry because sales and service professionals can capture information electronically in real time rather than writing it out by hand and later typing it into a system—often late at night or at the end of the week. Additionally, reps can look up customer phone numbers, driving directions, price lists, and inventory availability on the spot, saving them from wasting time phoning someone else for the information. Furthermore, firms can trigger automated processes, such as order fulfillment, as soon as the rep enters data on the device, improving process efficiency.”

Sushant Dwivedy, Director, Microsoft Business Solutions, Microsoft India, said, “The right information at the right time is critical for driving sales in these challenging times. Given the fiercely competitive marketplace sales force automation is an important tool to beat the competition. Before long, sales people without handheld access to valuable account information will be rare.”

Vendors luring SMBs

When it comes to an IT implementation, small businesses often question the benefits of CRM. Although SMBs have a limited workforce and lesser business volumes than large enterprises, they often have the same business processes and even face the same complexities. SMBs have begun to realize that they can no longer sustain the informal approach of interaction with their customers if business has to grow. Today, SMBs are going in for SaaS CRM and agree that a proper CRM plan has helped them increase customer retention, company profits and offer better service to customers.

Faber explained, “The groundswell for SaaS was initially conceived in the SMB sector, but is in interesting when you explore the composition of our 51,800 customers worldwide. There is an even split between small, medium and large. Cloud computing is becoming the IT standard for the enterprise.”

Rai opined, “We are aware that with the burgeoning potential of the CRM market globally, even mid-sized companies are increasingly coming to realize the necessity of investing in IT, especially in a good CRM solution. Oracle’s perspective is that customers should be able to start small and move at a pace that they want to in developing their technology infrastructure. They can even start with specific functionalities they want to actualize on a software-as-a-service model such as Oracle CRM On Demand, and be able to integrate smoothly with a more comprehensive on-premise CRM system as they expand and become more successful. For example, when they develop a comprehensive loyalty, marketing resource management or e-Commerce application that may exceed the capabilities of any on demand CRM system.”

Thomas Abraham, MD Sage Software India Pvt Ltd., opined, “The advantages of mobility are universal be they for an SMB or a large enterprise. However mobility deployment in SMBs is much easier to control given the lower number of users in the system.”

Barriers to adoption

With the numerous benefits that mobile CRM brings to the table, there are many inhibitors for the large-scale adoption of this technology. The first inhibitor as in the case of most technologies is cost. Although, solutions like Talisma’s sales force automation, enable end-to-end CRM functionality even on the basic handsets, most available mCRM solutions support only smartphones. The other major concern for most organizations is security—this includes handset security, transmission security, backend security etc. Issues like device theft can jeopardize any organization’s crucial information residing on the mobile phone.

Shubho Bhattacharyya Co-Founder & CEO of CDC CRM Solutions, added, “Inhibitors for this technology are the perceived cost of going mobile , many CRM solutions offer their mobile versions on high-end devices like the BlackBerry , smartphone etc. In a retail market like India where the number of feet on street is high and the transaction volumes are high and the margin per transaction low, considering an investment in such devices does not make business sense for most enterprises. However, some solutions such as ours have taken the CRM framework to low-end mobile devices by leveraging technologies such as USSD thereby providing a cost-effective alternative to the high-end smartphones.”

Abraham opined, “Well, the handsets that are optimized for Mobile CRM are relatively expensive. In addition, GPRS connectivity needs to be more affordable for organizations to give free access to their employees. Therefore the cost factor comes into play in India.”

Farber said, “As a cloud computing provider, we see a strong market opportunity in India. Software-as-a-Service CRM solutions on the mobile platform will lead the market. Mobile CRM is a big offering for the Indian market. We believe that it will proliferate beyond sophisticated IT and business users to widespread adoption across industries and customer-facing job functions in small and medium-sized businesses as well.”

The RoI of mCRM

Time is precious in a sales cycle. Today’s sales professionals spend an ever-increasing amount of time away from the office while juggling multiple deals. Sales users need to complete frequent tasks involving customer information in CRM, while using their mobile device, yet many mobile applications fail to consider the unique qualities of today’s handheld devices. Work styles on the mobile are different from those when in front of a desk, yet many mobile solutions today mimic desktop counterparts. Salespeople do not need a desktop application repurposed for a mobile device. They need an application that is designed specifically for a mobile device and for their mobile work style where information is just a click away. Unfortunately, sales representatives are hindered by a number of challenges in many of today’s mobile tools. All this results in incomplete sales information, decreased productivity, lower user adoption, and reduced sales.

Companies increasingly need to realize that in today’s business operations the sales professional needs to be empowered with solutions that will be available to them in the field. Investing in Mobile CRM solutions is becoming a necessity for any company looking to increase sales prospects.

“Well, we have to build the metrics that outlines typical revenue leakages, costs that are being incurred due to lack of a system, and revenue accelerators due to inherent efficiencies of a system. These need to be done based on the industry that we are referring to,” Abraham explained.

According to Rai, “The business case for mobile CRM is really the same as that for CRM in general. There are many cost savings and revenue raising benefits that come from having a single view of the customer, tighter sales collaboration, measurable sales processes and activities and more timely access to accurate and relevant information in order to drive sales. Moreover, if an organization is regularly meeting its customers face to face then a mobile solution is needed to ensure these benefits are delivered up and until the face-to-face meeting and not fall off once a salesperson closed the computer. Often timely and highly impactful events occur that can alter the dynamics of a sales engagement: Mobile CRM is needed to make sure these are not harmful surprises. In addition, mobile CRM will ensure that important processes do not cease once an employee is on the road. For example, how many leads will not be acted upon in a timely fashion because the sales rep was on the road? Mobile CRM ensures these opportunities are not missed.”

Emerging trends

We are witnessing a significant adoption of CRM amongst large enterprises especially in industries like Communications (Telco), Automotive OEMs, Insurance Companies, Pharmaceutical companies etc. and, very interestingly, a similar demand for CRM coming from mid-sized businesses that look for quick deployments on smaller budgets. Today, any company looking to take its customer interaction to the next level should look at investing in mobile CRM solutions.

The emerging platforms for mCRM are based on technologies such as J2ME and communication platforms based on USSD (which is very cost-effective) combined with SMS.

With the increasing innovation in the mobile CRM market, there is something for both enterprises and SMBs. Although mobile CRM is relatively new in India, it is a mature technology worldwide and poses fewer risks, when it comes to investing in it. Therefore, even if you do not have a CRM application in place, mobile CRM can help you achieve the competitive advantage that you were looking for.

varun.aggarwal@expressindia.com