I wanted to know how many of you used business apps from your phone. I found out! 66%, that's how many! That's a lot of you.
I am actually not that surprised. I write a weekly blog
on my exploits to become software independent. This week my theme
centered on the idea the less software we install, the more varied our
devices can become. It's true what Apple says, "there's an App for
everything". I am not sure if they are all iPhone Apps, but between the mainstream choices for smart phones, I bet that Apple is right. We can literlly run our businesses from the Palm (pun intended) of our hands.
But this proliferation of computing devices only drives home the
importance of data being accessible from everywhere. Application
vendors take very different approaches to this problem. Some good,
some not so good.
I am not a particular fan of the way that Salesforce
handles the mobile version of their app. Lots (and I mean lots) of
data has to be downloaded to my device before I can use the app. That
means a lot of room on my little hand held is taken up by look up
tables. I understand why they do it, and I am not saying I have a
better answer, I am just saying I don't like the idea of so much static
data being stored on my hand held.
I do however like the integration of Facebookwith
my address book on my Blackberry. This is integration at it's best. I
can see my contacts pictures and other FB info while I am using my
Rolodex. How cool is it to call a customer and be able to say,
"congratulations on the new arrival ... (car, boat, child, gold club)"
. This is what CRM was meant to be, not, "hey, I see you have not
bought anything from me in a while, is your credit ok?"
Now I am not about to suggest that Facebook on my Blackberry
is about to take the place of Salesforce mobile, but you have to wonder
if somewhere deep in the back offices at Facebook, someone hasn't
pointed out how much more information they have about your customers
than Salesforce does. My guess is that the people at Salesforce are
working to bring this about in the Service Cloud and will extend it to
the Sales Cloud if it is not already there. But the larger point is
the smooth integration of Faceboook data makes using it invisible. To
me that is how integration should work, it should be non-intrusive.
I have another app on my Blackberry that is well integrated, its called UberTwitter.
Granted not everyone thinks of Twitter as a business applications, but
leaving that aside this app does a noice job integrating on a
handheld. I can take a picture with my phone camera, store it on
UberPic, assign the local geo code for my current location then create
an entry on Twitter, all within UberTwitter. Nice! So if I have a
customer that is Tweeting about an a issue and I am in the area (or
not) I can send them a photo of some possible solution and they will
know that I am on the way.
It is a no brainer for service organizations. I nkow I am reaching
here, but this is where it is headed, the only reason it is not there
today is becuase the integration makes a scenerio like this anything
but transparrent.
Bjacaruso's Fortnightly Survey:
There are many ways to get paid, but most of them require you to invoice your customer. Our fortnightly question is:
What application generates your business invoices:
1. Accounting
2. CRM
3. Specialized Invoicing
4. Other
NOTE: I had to skip last week's survey write up as a result
of an illness. As a result I learned waiting a week more than doubles
my responses. As of this week my surveys will now be fortnightly (once
every two weeks).