10 mobile trends: Should you care?

2. Salesforce automation

Salesforce and field force automation have long been on CIOs' agendas and the possibility of taking such applications mobile has clear benefits. Yet deployments have often been sidelined due to issues around networks.

Few CIOs will doubt the utility of mobile email but mobile SFA presents a different set of challenges particularly around its bandwidth-hungry nature.

As 3G speeds increase in future, for example bolstered by rollouts of HSDPA over the next 18 months, the true potential of such mobile applications is likely to grow. Higher speeds will now mean the possibility of permanently connected SFA, unlike the historical trend for applications on devices that were only connected to the network periodically.

Ten mobile trends

1. FMC
2. Salesforce automation
3. VoIP
4. Payments
5. 3.5G - HSDPA
6. Location-based services
7. TV
8. Device management
9. M2M
10. Antivirus

According to analyst house Forrester, around a quarter of enterprises with SFA software have gone mobile with it.

While ROI may be hard to determine, much as is it for mobile email, mobile SFA generates hard benefits as well as soft. Among the benefits driving the deployments are speed of business - agents can have access to client data immediately and make changes in real time - and improving accuracy. Liz Herbert, senior analyst at Forrester, said: "With mobile SFA you tend to get more information and you tend to get better information."

For those pondering a rollout, issues of security should be writ large in any plan, with just one or two operating systems and only corporate devices supported. Usability is also key.

Herbert added: "Sometimes firms try to cram too much onto small devices for it to be useful. Firms should try to figure out what the key activities are where reps will benefit from having mobile device access and focus on those, not on trying to enable every single SFA feature on the device."

RATING: 4/5 - taking enterprise apps mobile isn't easy but can have immediate impact.