Customer Relation Management systems have been in existence for quite some time now ensuring the data is available in one single location. This has ensured a certain level of efficiency in the organization. So what does it take to optimize it?

The answer is Mobile Customer Relationship Management Systems (Mobile CRMs). The obvious reason is because it is mobile! We know that the Sales and Marketing teams are mostly on the move in various level of customer engagement and business hunt. This mobility of the team does not allow the team to have instant access to the enterprise data. A Mobile CRM application, on devices like a smartphone or a tablet, ensures that data is available in real time to the ever moving team.

Access/Modify/Interact: Easy access to the customer’s data and the ability to modify and interact with that data when the employee is away from the office is achieved using mobile CRM. They can make calls and email specific contact details to interact with the customers.

Data Management: The application allows the user to view and organize all relevant customer information online in a folder or file arrangement. One can change any of these files quickly to a webpage according to their convenience.

Social Network Features: Applications like Salesforce increase the productivity of the sales and marketing teams with popular features of some of the social networks such as profiles, news feeds, status updates. Everything that is saved in within the enterprise’s cloud CRM solution is accessible with applications like Salesforce Chatter.

Social CRM: The mobile CRM application can have a social program built on it. This provides mobile access to basic CRM functionalities as well as to some of the social networking contacts, thus increasing marketing and sales effectiveness. The aim is to provide relevant information to the sales and marketing teams to increase their success rates and to keep good interactions with the customers consistently.

]]> http://anb.preludesys.com/blog/mobile-crm-applications.html/feed 0 http://anb.preludesys.com/blog/trends-in-mobile-computing-2012.html http://anb.preludesys.com/blog/trends-in-mobile-computing-2012.html#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:52:02 +0000 Muthu http://anb.preludesys.com/blog/?p=824 Long term Evolution (LTE)

The fourth generation mobile phones and tablets have capabilities of 3G, GSM and VoIP (Voice Over IP). This VoIP capability will help companies to slash their phone charges to a great extent. Business applications on such mobile devices will ensure that the application can be run simultaneously while speaking to a client/peer.

Smartphone applications

Third-party software vendors will increasingly make enterprise applications available for smartphones, including inventory management, electronic medical records management, warehousing, distribution and even architectural and building inspection data.

Security

As different types of mobile devices are introduced, corporate IT departments will find it increasingly challenging to identify and authenticate individual end users. As such, expect to see a combination of improvements in both Virtual Private Network (VPN) software and hardware-based VPNs to support multiple device types.

Business Applications

Enterprises and its employees are increasingly becoming dependent on their mobile devices to save time and multitask. With mobility penetrating all departments of an organization, app development for business’ is going to expand further and grow in 2012. Wise choice of the platform and specific business app is going to drive the growth for application developers.

Cloud and Mobility

Cloud computing can make a significant difference for mobile users as their devices offer continually improving functionality. The partnership between very powerful mobile devices and even-more-powerful cloud platforms creates the sort of opportunity that stretches the mind for application developers, and introduces new opportunities for applications that didn’t even occur to people in the desktop PC world.

Mobile Payment Apps

Payment preferences of the consumers are shifting from just online to mobile payments. Mobile Wallet services are likely to replace credit/debit cards and net banking. Organizations other than financial institutions will also invest in custom made payment applications.

Location Based Apps

The traction to develop location based applications is on the raise with all the mobile devices being able to support GPS. This is beneficial for mobile advertisers, mobile markets to offer targeted, location based content for its consumers.

Merchant: Merchants expect quick transaction time of the application, minimal cost in using the solution/application, easy integration into the existing system, high level of security, certain degree of customization, real time status of the payment.

Financial Institutions: Expectations include network operator independent solution, application as per designed by the bank, exceptional branding opportunities for the institutions, ability to handle volumes of transactions and ensure customer loyalty.

Mobile payment solutions may be classified according to the type of payment effected, and based on the technology adopted to implement the solution.

Solutions based on payments are

• Bank Account based – the bank account of the customer is linked to the mobile device of the customer
• Credit card based – the credit card number is linked to the customer’s device
• Telecommunication Company Billing based – the payment by the customer is made through the service provider and later charged in his phone bill.

Solutions based on technology adopted are

• Short Message Service (SMS)
• Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) – technology unique to GSM
• Phone based application (J2ME/BREW) – the application resides on the mobile phone of the customer.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) – is a fusion of RFID and mobile phones. NFC enabled phones act as RFID tags or readers.
• Chip based – the application is integrated in the SIM card.
• Mobile wallet – the application resides in the device with details of the customer allowing him to make payments using the device.

Media-Independent Handover (MIH) is a framework defined by the IEEE 802.21 working group to support the handover in heterogeneous networks. This framework aims to facilitate the network discovery and selection process by gathering information locally from the mobile network interfaces and remotely from other MIH entities in the network infrastructure.  This framework has three different components as mentioned below.

MIH Function (MIHF): The MIHF is a logical entity that comprises three services: Media Independent Command Service (MICS), Media Independent Event Service (MIES), and Media Independent Information Service (MIIS).

Service Access Points (SAP): SAP is an interface that defines a set of primitives to communicate between the MIHF and the other layers.

MIH Users: MIH users are entities that use MIH services and manage the mobility process, normally a layer 3 mobility protocol (L3MP). These MIH users can be located in the mobile node or in the network.

This media-independent framework is a more scalable and efficient method of addressing inter-technology handovers.

It is the Mobile Application Management (MAM) approach that will be witnessed in 2012 with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program heating up the mobile space. The MAM approach is about managing applications on any mobile device. It is about managing the strategy and process around developing/procuring, securing, deploying, accessing configuring, updating and removing business/enterprise applications from mobile devices used by the employees. IT departments have a lot to keep in mind: identify employee-owned devices on the network; selecting recommended platforms for users; provisioning devices for secure access and centralized monitoring (whether company or employee-owned); dealing with lost or stolen devices; easily wiping corporate data from employee devices; coordinating volume purchases from public app stores and publishing in-house apps.

So, if you are into the BYOD program, then MAM is for you!

So, how does a BYOD program affect the finances of the company & the employees?

The major financial shift in the enterprise comes from the replacement of bulky desktops and other IT hardware. When the hardware reduces, the service cost also reduces. The other side to this coin is that the data center will have to redesign its operational model to accommodate personal devices being used.  With more processing done on the server end, more servers will be needed to handle the processing and to distribute the workload.  As more applications are run at the data center bandwidth may become a bottleneck.  The company will need to focus attention on the physical and technical security of the data center by limiting user access to specific applications and data areas to minimize overall business risk.

Above all these, the ultimate reduction in the costs, the satisfaction and comfort the employee gets in using his own personal device will ultimately result in higher productivity.

Server-side processing: In case the content has to be processed in the server only (without happening in the application), optimize the number of times the application has to communicate with the server. This can be done if multiple data requests can be combined into a single request with multiple sub-requests. If the same can be done for returned data, then the time saving is going to be double.

Data Exchange Methods: For server/app data exchange, JSON and SOAP are suggested technologies. These technologies are effective when it can be formatted in the device and when a live data feed is required. Delimited text can also be used for returning results from a server to an app. Splitting delimited text can be quicker and easier than parsing JSON or SOAP if the data is simple.

Content Caching: Caching content on servers has been standard practice for reducing bandwidth for a long time. Apply caching techniques to app development for better performance and efficiency. This will reduce pinging servers constantly unless a live data feed is required.

Media Optimization: If media is an absolute essential in the application, then encode it to the best possible settings based on the actual content. If your content is static and manageable in size, consider including it within the app rather than via an in-app download or streaming.

• Different screen sizes of the mobile devices makes rendering of images and positioning of elements on the screen unsuitable. Exhaustive user interfaces (UI) testing is necessary to ensure compatibility of the application
• Testing programs should ensure that applications deliver optimum performance for all desired configurations of hardware. This is because the processing speed and the memory size differ between mobile devices.
• Network latency (time taken for data transfer) will be unpredictable when applications communicate over network boundaries, leading to inconsistent data transfer speeds. Testing should measure the performance of applications for various network bandwidths
• Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology reduces development time, indirectly pressurizing the testing team to reduce the testing cycle time without compromising quality and coverage
• Use of emulators during testing is beneficial at initial stages of development and when the application is device independent. It is better to use the actual device to validate the results.
• Diversity in mobile hardware and platforms imposes testing programs to incorporate GUI (Graphical User Interface) and compatibility tests