Career Application and Communications Software
Mobile-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Applications
Of the many software applications that sales professionals rely on daily, their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are the most essential for informing existing customers of new products and sales, and tracking new ones. Of the many selling and service strategies that CRM systems enable, the most valuable is in gaining a 360-degree view of customers and ensuring every department in an organization stays focused on their needs and wants (Beasty, 2007). CRM systems provide sales teams with the ability to coordinate their selling efforts across the company, getting needed support and collaboration with the diverse departments and divisions that they rely on to sell products and services. An example of how a typical CRM is organized is shown in Figure 1, Microsoft CRM System Design. The design of CRM systems is predicated on creating a system of record that captures every...
The CRM platform diagram shown in Figure 1 also shows one of the most essential features of any selling system is the ability to integrate with e-mail, database, and web interface components. All of these elements are essential for ensuring a CRM system can be immediately usable by sales teams in addition to being portable enough to work on multiple platforms, including mobile and tablet devices (Yang, Rhee, 2009). Figure 1 also illustrates how critical it is to have Business Logic and Web Services work together to provide for role-based access to the information in the CRM system. As can be seen from figure 1, Microsoft designed their CRM system to integrate directly into Outlook, their e-mail platform. This makes it easy for salespeople standardized on this system to quickly send, receive and track e-mails that are part of campaigns and selling cycles. One of the most critical success factors in CRM adoption is having…
