Companies lose sales through lack of mobile CRM
More than half of European companies lost out on sales and service opportunities before deploying mobile customer relationship management. 
That is one of the findings of a study by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Research In Motion (RIM) of over 1,000 business and IT decision makers, from companies in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
The research found that the top two reasons organisations mobilise CRM are improved sales and improved employee productivity (87%). The third biggest driver was improved customer service (55%), suggesting that the trend to mobilise enterprise applications not only benefits internal operations, but also increases customer satisfaction.
With information changing at a fast pace in the current business environment, mobile employees can not solely rely on accessing information from a desk-based system as it is often inaccessible on a timely basis or out of date by the time they leave the office.
Respondents from the study outlined five main benefits of mobile CRM, compared to traditional desk-based access, which included:
– Improved productivity of front-line personnel (77%)
– Improved customer experience (74%)
– Increased customer satisfaction (73%)
– Improved business process efficiency (73%)
– Reduced CRM costs (63%)
Chris Burke, MD of Research In Motion, EMEA, commented: “To be effective, mobile workers need to call upon the most up-to-date information wherever they are. Many of our customers, in a broad range of industries, have already recognised that mobile CRM can offer significant operational and customer-facing benefits and they are selecting the BlackBerry platform for its security, manageability and depth of support from CRM application vendors.”
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of the respondents who have deployed mobile CRM said that it helps front-line personnel be more effective in their jobs. Employees can access and update information wherever they are, which can prove to be a real business benefit not only to mobile workers, but also for office-based employees who rely on real-time data.
The survey sample represented different sized organisations from across Europe and showed that although more larger companies (>500 employees) have mobilised CRM systems to date, a greater number of smaller organisations (63%) have plans to mobilise their CRM systems.
Over two-thirds (69%) of companies who have mobilised CRM stated that they are likely to recommend others do so. The most common areas within an organisation that utilise mobile CRM are:
– Sales (63%)
– Customer service (60%)
– Field service (51%)
The report outlines that more than half the respondents who have a CRM system in place previously lost sales or service opportunities because the information they needed was available back at the office. Burke, added: “This alone is a compelling enough reason for organisations to seriously consider extending their CRM solution to mobile workers.”