This paper examines mobile-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and their role in supporting sales professionals. It discusses the core purpose of CRM systems — providing a 360-degree view of customers and coordinating selling efforts across departments — before analyzing key features such as individual customer records, aggregated reporting, and analytics dashboards. The paper uses Microsoft's CRM system and Salesforce.com as illustrative examples, highlighting the importance of workflow integration and role-based access. It concludes by noting the rapid growth of CRM adoption on mobile and tablet platforms, which is expanding the overall CRM market.
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 for tracking new ones. Of the many selling and service strategies that CRM systems enable, the most valuable is 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, obtaining needed support and collaboration from the diverse departments and divisions 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 aspect of a customer's interaction with the company and each of its departments. The CRM platform diagram shown in Figure 1 also illustrates one of the most essential features of any selling system: the ability to integrate with email, database, and web interface components. All of these elements are essential for ensuring a CRM system is immediately usable by sales teams and 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 role-based access to information within the CRM system. As shown in Figure 1, Microsoft designed their CRM system to integrate directly into Outlook, their email platform. This makes it easy for salespeople standardized on this system to quickly send, receive, and track emails that are part of campaigns and selling cycles. One of the most critical success factors in CRM adoption is having the system integrate seamlessly into the workflows salespeople already use (Croteau & Li, 2003). Microsoft has designed their CRM system to make it as easy as possible for salespeople already using Outlook.
Figure 1: Microsoft CRM System Design
The main features of CRM systems are individual customer records, aggregated customer reports, and the analytics used for reporting the results of advertising, selling, and promotional strategies (Croteau & Li, 2003). Depending on the specific roles of the sales, marketing, sales management, or senior management users on the system, specific features will be available. Role-based definition of CRM features and functions is the current and future direction of this type of software (Beasty, 2007). An example of the type of reporting systems that CRM systems provide is shown in Figure 2, a screen capture of a typical Salesforce.com CRM reporting dashboard. This dashboard can be easily customized to meet the specific needs and requirements of a given CRM user, often entirely on their own.
Figure 2: Salesforce.com CRM Example Dashboard
"Rapid CRM expansion onto mobile and tablet platforms"
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