6 Good Mobile CRM Tools At Your Service

What does a client want? To have certain business and/or personal needs fulfilled? Check. To receive due attention in a minimal time? Check. At the same time there are businesses that provide clients with products and services. Do businesses need to streamline their interactions with the existing clients and gain new ones? Check. Do they need to synchronize every activity in business development? Check. Do they apply specialized systems for those purposes? Undoubtedly.

Mobile Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a must for modern businesses. According to a survey by Forrester among 1000 European businesses in 2013, there was 62% increase in usage and adoption of CRM apps. They also reported 74% increase in customer satisfaction due to faster responses. There was 87% productivity improvement of sales and other employees, and business process efficiency got 73% higher.

Along with optimization, the other great must for businesses is mobility. Not everyone is able to carry a laptop around town, let alone travel. Add here carrying the needed laptop accessories and its relatively short battery life. On the other hand there are tablets: their adoption grows in leaps and bounds, batteries last longer, they are about five times more compact, and they offer the easiest navigation. All one needs is to load it with the required software. There are many mobile CRM tools offered for businesses, usually as a subscription for a certain fee (SaaS model). Let's look at what's offered in the mobile world.

1. Salesforce.com is a cloud computing company probably best known for CRM software, merging the mobile and the social. The company offers various services, including Sales Cloud (plus Chatter, a collaborative social network for direct communication), Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Force.com(a platform-as-a-service product for building third-party add-on apps for integration), Data.com, Salesforce Work.com, and so on.

2. SugarCRM offers software for sales, marketing and support workforce. Their customer relationship maintenance enables corporate collaboration, social selling, sales analytics, multichannel marketing, integration with e-mails, file management and calendars (such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Box.com), and of course, mobility. Plus there is an opportunity to create custom solutions and enhancements.

3. Zoho CRM. Zoho Corporation has a lot to offer to businesses. There is a huge online office suite: file management, enterprise social networking, project management, invoicing, and much more, including a CRM system used by more than 50,000 companies, with corresponding mobile apps on App Store and Google Play. Its features offer the usual standards of good client management: automation, activity tracking, synchronization with Google apps, and ability of CRM integration with third-party apps.

4. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is another software package for automating sales, marketing, and client care. Microsoft offers both on-premise and cloud-based solutions, Outlook interface, dedicated database, contractual privacy protections, integration with Microsoft services (Microsoft Office, Office 365, Microsoft SharePoint, Windows Azure, Skype, Yammer), mobile access on major platforms, and lots of other features, including a .NET-based framework for further customizations.

5. mobidev.biz
SAP Business ByDesign is an on-demand solution for small and middle-sized businesses, which enables enterprise resource planning (ERP) and CRM via mobile. This is SaaS, managed and maintained by SAP, with lots of built-in features, including business analytics and reporting, e-learning, support, and more. SAP utilizes the conventional monthly fee payment model. You may also check SAP Business One - an affordable ERP solution for small businesses.

6. And it can be that your one particular business needs a custom CRM solution that will fit its processes, with unique integration capabilities, enhanced security, or set up for a unique selection of tasks. What are the features of CRM that you'll be surely looking for?
- Integration. Let's take social media as an example. Almost everyone is on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn nowadays, including your clients and their brands. Thus you'll know when and how to pay the right attention to your client and grow your base.
- Collaboration. Not only must your CRM software be mobile, it has to enable efficient interactions between employees. This may include integration with cloud storage services, such as Box.com or Dropbox.
- Automation. For example, automated logging of activities will save much time for other important tasks.
- Telephony. A vital component of not having to leave the CRM software and proceed elsewhere to communicate with a client.

There is much more to CRM than these four features, of course. If what you need is quite different from what others can offer, you may save costs and increase efficiency of your workforce by building your own custom CRM system in a partnership with a reliable software contractor.

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