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Attracting new customers and retaining the existing ones is the foremost need of any enterprise business. That is where customer relationship management (CRM) strategies are playing a pivotal role as they facilitate enterprises to manage and nurture their interactions with customers vis-ŕ-vis sales prospects. CRM strategies now rely on various technologies to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes that include not only sales related activities, but also customer service and technical support.

According to Forrester Research, global investment on CRM is expected to touch $11 bn annually by 2010, as companies strive to grow topline revenues, improve customer experience, and boost the productivity of customer-facing staff. 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. Gerald Prabhu, director, CDC CRM Solutions says, "We believe that over 85% of the enterprise mobility market is corporate email that is deployed over smartphones like Blackberry, etc."

Evolving CRM
Now the CRM strategies are going mobile with the advent of handsets featuring conducive applications for CRM. As sales teams spend most of the time in the field, mobile CRM (mCRM ) is becoming the need of the hour. Pull out your iPhones and Blackberrys, they are your tools for CRM on the go and for getting more information or feedback from your customers. Not only that, even a Rs 1,000 mobile handset can be used to support CRM functions, be it lead assignment and management, sales processing, or field service.

Shubho Bhattacharya, CEO, CDC CRM Solutions says, "We see a big shift in the market with more and more workers across companies having access to wireless devices. According to a survey, this could be as high as 60% by next year itself. With both customers and employees going mobile, it was only a matter of time before CRM players realized their software better be light on its feet, as well to support those nimble footed, always on the move, customers and businesses."

Mobile CRM is set to revolutionize the enterprise mobility market in India. Large enterprises who have to reach to their extended 'feet on street' would leverage mCRM to get the right information at the right time. This will eliminate a whole set of processes that are currently done manually, and hence reduce the time needed for obtaining data from fifteen days to an instant.

Prabhu of CDC CRM Solutions says, "We see that only less than 5% enterprises have deployed mCRM like applications. Among them, most organizations have deployed them as a 'point' or a departmental solution with little or no integration with the back-end CRM solution. The prevailing trend is that enterprises that have large 'feet on street' are looking at deploying a mCRM application that can work on multiple handsets; multiple operating systems such as Symbian, Windows, and Android; and use multiple transport mechanisms like GPRS, SMS, USSD, etc." Enterprises are now looking at solutions that can extend the capability of their existing CRM and allow quicker deployment of modules on the same application.

Jeremy Cooper, VP, marketing, Salesforce.com, APAC says, "There is consensus that over the next few years, more data will be consumed on mobile devices than traditional PC environments in India. The opportunity to enable roaming knowledge workers is enormous." He also adds, "The market for mCRM solutions is already flourishing in other countries like the US and the UK. India's mCRM market is still relatively at a nascent stage. But India is fast catching up."

The number of mobile phone users is increasing in India. The country witnessed a 54% y-o-y growth in subscriber base, adding over 100 mn new users in 2009. With the mobile penetration level having exceeded 25%, a considerable growth potential still remains. There is a tremendous potential for mCRM in India and all major CRM players have started offering mCRM products in the market.

Sairaman Jaganathan, VP, business solutions division, Wipro Infotech says, "Integrated CRM solutions are helping enterprises increase revenues and lower costs by improving customer acquisition and retention capabilities. Real-time, customer-centric CRM solutions offer businesses a competitive advantage in routing, servicing, and maintaining their existing customer base by identifying highly-valued clients. In India, the penetration of mCRM looks very positive in the coming years."

Market Potential
IDC-a global provider of market intelligence on IT and telecom industries-expects the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet to surpass the 1 bn mark over the next four years worldwide. Furthermore, IDC believes that accessing online business applications and corporate email systems are also expected to grow rapidly as businesses move to empower their mobile workforce.

Cooper of Salesforce.com says, "Nowadays, sales representatives need to perform many tasks, such as managing appointments, collaborating with sales teams, and connecting with customer contacts, etc. To serve their needs, Salesforce.com is offering Mobile Lite, which enables users to access sales cloud and service cloud from their mobile devices. Salesforce.com is working to expand its mCRM market in India. We already have many clients in India including a number of SMBs. We provide a solution that is scalable to an organization of any size."

Salesforce's Mobile Lite service allows end-users to log calls and emails, update activities and tasks as well as view account and contact details, leads, opportunities, cases, solutions, assets, and dashboards-all from their mobile devices. Mobile Lite offers a subset of the features available in the full mobile version-Salesforce Mobile-and with just a few clicks, customers can upgrade to the full functionality.

Rajendra Mruthyunjayappa, MD, Talisma, APAC & Europe says, "India being the third fastest growing market for smartphones, the adoption of mCRM looks very positive. Enterprise adoption of mCRM is still in its nascent stages. But many enterprises are keen on deploying mCRM applications for their sales and field force activities. We assume the market to witness a growth of 25-30%."

Jaganathan agrees, "There is already wide acceptability for CRM solutions among Indian enterprises. Today, they are essential tools for enterprises to manage, grow, and develop customer base. With increased broadband and mobile usage, a mobile sales force represents an efficient and productive sales team. The availability of good connectivity also acts as a boost for mCRM applications in India. All these factors act as a catalyst for increased adoption of mCRM solutions."

Moving from 2G to 3G will also have a bigger impact in the realm of mobile applications. Mobile CRM will become an extension of CRM solutions and will gain increased acceptability across enterprises and industries. Although this market is still emerging, rapid growth is expected as bandwidth and inter-connectivity capabilities expand over the forecast period. Even though mCRM only works on smartphones like Apple, Blackberry or the ones using Windows mobile, the market for mCRM continues to expand. India is the third fastest growing smartphone market in the world.

And, when we compare the Indian market with that of the US, there emerges a huge contrast as the latter is more mature and caters to the high-end mobile worker who would be typically using a Blackberry or smartphone to access the mCRM market, whereas here in India we see a great demand for mCRM for the FOS who may number over 50,000 in an Insurance company or a bank. MCRM needs to work on a high-end phone as well as a low-end phone that has no GPRS.

The Edge
No doubt mCRM facilitates you to get the right information at the right place at the right time. It avoids delay in getting information from the field and simplifies data capture for immediate action. The enterprise is profited from up-to-date information availed through mCRM solutions.

As Prabhu points out, "The benefits of mCRM are immense for enterprises as the cost of getting information and providing service is greatly reduced, thereby increasing profitability." Mruthyunjayappa adds, "Mobile CRM enhances the productivity while ensuring successful accomplishment of sales/service plans."

Cooper says, "Salesforce Mobile makes a relevant subset of Salesforce CRM data that is immediately accessible on a mobile device. This solution helps keep the data on device manageable, while providing instant access to important records. With Salesforce Mobile, information is automatically delivered to a user's device when it's connected, so there is constant access to latest information." By mobilizing AppExchange applications, along with custom applications, managers can access all the information they need when they are out of the office.

Mobile CRM from CDC CRM Solutions allows companies to extend all existing CRM applications to wireless, so that their executives on the field or on the move can get mission-critical information anytime, anywhere. It offers a full suite to business management, communication, and collaboration software as a service. Which essentially means you won't have to interrupt your work to go offline or worry about losing your data with occasional disconnections.

Challenges
Though there are huge benefits of going for mCRM, the telecom coverage and connectivity issues need to be addressed in remote locations in India. Limited screen size and storage on a mobile device will be challenges for the CRM process.

As mCRM standards are still evolving, there are challenges in keeping pace with mobile technology platforms, numerous devices and protocols. The challenges are in user adoption as most FOS are used to have the mobile for only voice communication. Prabhu says, "It requires for them to be trained and incentivized to use them. Furthermore, most enterprises have outsourced the last mile or FOS to third parties, and hence, the adoption is still a challenge."

From development and deployment perspective, according to Mruthyunjayappa, another challenge is that of the same application working on multiple devices and platforms. Also, adoption and success of enterprise mCRM depends on the willingness of individuals who may or may not be comfortable with using advanced technologies.

As Jaganathan rightly points out, "Firstly, it is important to understand the difference between technical needs and the desires of users. Then it's important to make it clear to end users that the mobile device is to be used in conjunction with CRM applications, and not as a replacement for a PC or laptop."

An enterprise needs to get users and upper management on board with the initiative as soon as possible. It is critical to get the IT department, end users and management on the same page, so that the project effectively meets business objectives. Integrating a robust CRM system with mobile devices, which often has limited memory, can be a daunting task. It is important to determine what data is most important to display and then develop appropriate screens to view it within the limits of the device. Technical concerns regarding security, authentication and data input of sensitive or proprietary information need to be addressed to capture the full potential of the mCRM market.

Kannan K
kannan@cybermedia.co.in

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