Benefits of Mobile Apps in CRM and Sales Management

Due to the unforeseen growth of mobile device and application markets, companies are starting to realize the opportunities of utilizing mobile technology in business.

According to a study conducted by Aberdeen Group, the single most important factor for the implementation of mobile CRM is the need for real time sales decisions. In other words, emphasis was put on speeding up the sales process by enabling sales activities and access to customer data outside of the office.

Mobile CRM allows customer data to be made more real time based and thus more accurate. Furthermore, sales activities can be automated using the combination of cloud services and mobile apps, which makes managing and monitoring sales easier and less time-consuming.

Summary of the Benefits of Mobile CRM

More up-to-date customer data
Accuracy of the data
Support for sales calls
More efficient sales management

Faster sales process
Streamlining salespersons’ daily activities
Easier adoption of the CRM as a whole
Better communication between the sales team and sales management as well as inside the sales team

Mobile CRM creates significant added value especially to companies whose salespeople work on the move.

Saving information as soon as possible after it’s gained is important in order to avoid mistakes and forgetting key details.

41% of all customer information is not being saved

According to sales managers, on average 41% of customer data gathered by salespeople will remain outside of the companies’ information systems and therefore as only personal knowledge.

The amount of data that remains invisible to companies is bound to contain profitable information. Sales information is a very valuable asset for companies and can be utilized in many ways.

20% of sales leads are forgotten

Due to the lack of saving data, on average 20% of the leads that come into the knowledge of salespeople are not contacted.

This illustrates a significant problem in the way companies handle their customer data. The revenue lost through forgotten leads can be estimated using the total number of handled leads, hit-rate and average size of a deal.

80% of the respondents said that the use of mobile CRM would ‘moderately’ or ‘greatly’ increase the saving of customer data in their company.

The second part of the survey covered companies’ CRM practices.

The respondents were asked whether their companies used specific rules for managing different kinds of customer relations, in other words segment-based customer care programs.

Problem: How to get salespeople to commit to taking care of customer relations as intended by the management? Could it be improved by a mobile app that makes timely suggestions to the salesperson about suitable customers to contact according to the programs?

69% of the responding companies used customer care programs.

69% of the responding companies have defined rules for taking care of different types of customer segments

Mobile solutions improve customer care

97% of the respondents estimated the mobile app to be beneficial to their company by making their salespeople work more closely along the lines of the programs. Or if there were no set programs, improving the productivity and direction of the salespeople in general.

One of the goals of the survey was to find out how much time sales managers use for planning in contrast to guiding and managing everyday sales.

The survey showed that managing everyday activities of the sales staff takes over 30% of a sales manager’s time on average.

Mobile applications can automate and optimize this, therefore allowing sales managers to spend more time in other activities, such as planning.

Mobile application saves 26% time spent on managing activities

Sales managers saw significant time saving potential in sales activity management.

Solutions that reduce for example the time spent on organizing sales and it’s routines, allow more focusing more on planning and improving sales in the big picture.

Mobile app allows salespeople to spend more time on interacting with customers.

The most time saving aspects according to the sales managers were calling and logging of sales phonecalls and more efficient directing of the salesperson’s own activity.

Sales managers estimated the overall time savings potential with different mobile functionalities to be in total 19,4% which means almost an entire day every week!

Mobile application saves 33,7% of the time spent on contacting customers by phone and logging the results of the phone calls

Easier customer contacting and saving of the information gained from the contacts was seen as a significant time saving aspect of mobile sales solutions. Features of the evaluated application include for example the possibility to make notes of phone calls with speech-to-text functionality or audio recording in addition to typing. The notes are then synchronized with the base CRM system of the company.

25,7% time savings for salespeople in managing and prioritizing their own work

The biggest time saving potential in contrast to the total working time was seen in features that help salespeople to find the most lucrative customers to contact by making suggestions based on the company’s CRM strategy and programs.

Amount of time saved in searching and entering new customer data was estimated at 29,6%

Mobile application was also estimated to have benefits in making the handling of customer data more efficient in general. Important factor is that all data is saved and accessed easily even while on the move.

Salesperson’s time allocation

In conclusion, sales managers saw great potential in optimizing daily sales activities. With the right kind of tools it is possible to save time and increase productivity, achieving more sales as a result.