Over the past couple of years, a new technology has quietly crept into forward-thinking businesses – enterprise mobile applications. But wait, before you quit reading, these tools can improve how we do our jobs, and how our jobs are able to deliver the original promise of customer relationship management systems (CRM).
Between 25% and 60% of CRM projects fail to meet expectations according to studies conducted over the past decade (GetBase). Enterprise apps can dramatically improve work through “speed, connection and information” with front-line employees.
Why Is This New & Different?
These apps are for internal users and are tied to your company’s network. This single fact reduces the cost and complexity. Enterprise Mobile Apps are simpler and less expensive to develop and maintain. The two main companies developing the platform for these apps are Google and Microsoft (ok, not too surprising).
The promise of this technology is that mere mortals can develop and program, although from this mortal’s experience, they have made progress but fallen short on this promise. The improvement potential and power that these apps have, however, has exceeded my expectations.
Five Ways Enterprise Apps Can Help Your Business
1. CRM User Interface
User satisfaction with CRM systems averaged a meager 50% for medium and large companies (software advice 201). Mobile apps are designed for a specific job within an organization. This is an important distinction that allows mobile apps to provide the right information, at the right time to the right person. This provides two immediate benefits: better employee engagement and productivity. This also allows organizations to decide who needs a full CRM user seat versus limited interaction directly with the database.
Manual data entry is sited by 23% of salespeople as the biggest challenge when using the existing CRM (HubSpot 2017) and 27% of salespeople are spending an hour or more each day on data entry (HubSpot 2018).
Why not tailor your CRM user interface to eliminate the busy work of scrolling through screens that don’t relate to people’s jobs? Why pay an average of $1,000 for full user seat privileges unless they are useful and productive? Why not demand more for your dollar?
2. Field Service
Enterprise apps are a natural fit for field service employees. The ability for enterprise apps to facilitate two-way communication is a game-changer. Imagine a service rep describing an unusual part, noise or configuration with the aid of live “audio/visual” to show the technical support staff in real-time. Imagine having positive closure of the service call with GPS and photo verification for that skeptical client. Imagine an app with the intelligence to predict the chance of failure for a critical part or system before an expensive downtime event.
Why not provide the tools to better engage your employees who will then better engage your customers?
3. Sales & Marketing Funnel Optimization
Managing the sales funnels with a focus on salesperson level planning, and best practices for each step in the sales process. While most CRM systems claim this ability, they generally fall short in specifically what is being optimized. Ask to see how each marketing campaign contributes to your company’s net cash flow or company value, and then wait patiently for a blank stare. 39% of marketers say proving the ROI of their marketing activities is their top marketing challenge (HubSpot 2018).
Why not expect your sales funnel to be optimized on the metrics that are most important to you? Why not expect that reporting on salesperson performance mirrors that sales funnel and comes complete with best practices and video tips from top salespeople? It’s time to expect more from your CRM!
4. Local Business Intelligence
There is a close relative to mobile apps that deserves some mention – Business Intelligence (Bi). To date, Bi has been generating corporate or “top-down” reporting of financial results and key performance indicators. Mobile apps can turn that standard “upside-down” by capturing local intelligence and updating CRM with local insights and opportunities.
Why not get more participation from your front-line sales team? Why not include this group in planning at a local level with scorecards to identify progress and opportunities everywhere? Why not make best practices more meaningful with collaboration and reporting?
5. Contract Performance Management
Do you sometimes feel that you’re the last to know about service issues? Enterprise apps are a game-changer for contract management and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Finding out that work wasn’t completed to your customer’s satisfaction only when they won’t pay an invoice is tragic, but all too common an occurrence in business today. Enterprise apps allow you to manage contract performance or customer success within your organization.
Why not systematize contract delivery/payment thresholds and standardized approval workflows from both sales/service teams and the customer.
An Emerging Partnership
Much has been written about the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), yet little has been written about the synergies with CRM, mobile apps and AI. Currently, about 15% of firms utilize AI (Adobe 2018).
The promise of AI is simply the ability to predict accurately. The power of AI is that we make predictions on things that matter constantly. But to make a prediction matter, AI needs data and a process to get the prediction in the hand of the person who needs it, and precisely when it is needed.
AI gets data from CRM (and business intelligence systems) and makes its predictions useful by getting it in the right hands through enterprise apps. There are several powerful firms committing massive resources to plugging AI predictions into their company’s decision processes. Are ready to complete with this new playing field?
Summary
Enterprise apps are becoming solutions that are extending the reach and capability of CRM systems. These apps are also becoming more “mainstream” with recent product investments by both Google and Microsoft, both of which have included enterprise apps in their popular business software systems. Artificial intelligence holds the promise of providing fast and accurate predictions that can improve enterprise decision processes.
CRM Performance Strategies was created to help growing firms benefit from enterprise apps. Our focus is to provide customized solutions to your needs while addressing the business cases and more. Our depth of experience and ability to understand your unique needs sets us apart.
If you are on the road to making your business better with enterprise apps, then this overview should give you confidence in your strategy. If not, it may be time to ask yourself – why not?
Ready to get started? Schedule a free, live demo today.