07 Sep There’s no reason why data available in mobility should be limited to the strict minimum
Nowadays, companies are stocking increasing quantities of data. This data, which concerns the clients, products or even the market, is highly valuable for a majority of organizations and their employees, yet often it underused because it is not readily accessible or easy to visualize.
Today, there is a lot of buzz about “Big Data”. One of the main current challenges in this field is how to intelligently analyze in real time large volumes of data from various sources. Although this is often a prominent point of discussion amongst technical, marketing and sales teams in large corporates, the simple question of how the basic professional data can be accessed and used is not always addressed.
Take the example of a sales person who works for a company that sells pens. The company has numerous customers such as stationary shops, retailers and wholesalers, that the sales person meets regularly (let’s say once a month). The pens are of good quality, cheap and some are even innovative, however when customers ask questions during a meeting for which the sales person was not prepared, they have two solutions: either they call the sales assistant and disturb her work, or they postpone their answer until they are back in the office. Why? Because they cannot, or cannot easily access the full customer dossier. The absence, or lack of information can therefore easily extend the period of negotiations or even derail a sale.
Can you tell me why my last delivery was late? The last invoice sent by the accounts department was wrong. Can you deal with it? Can you tell me of the name of the new pen that I bought last time we met?
Companies therefore find themselves in a paradoxical situation: they have the information, but it is simply not available in the right place at the right time. The data is stored in companies’ CRM and/or ERPs. So why shouldn’t the sales teams have access when they most need it?
For many companies, mobility is essential but complicated:
- What information do my sales representatives need? Should we give them partial or full access to the data? Won’t they be lost?
- Isn’t a smartphone too small? Should we buy tablets for the sales team? And how about their access on the computer? If they have different interfaces on each device, they will be confused..
… There are many questions and the mobile application market only partially answers them.
Companies have two alternatives when addressing this problem: either they can decide not to give access to data in mobility or they can provide limited data via mobile applications. But these solutions simply do not solve the problem of accessing data outside of the office.
We have a different point of view! Why choose between mobility and customer knowledge? Sales people in the field should be able to answer questions and requests from their customers and prospects at any time. Providing only a minimum amount of information can quickly lead to a solution being totally abandoned, since its limited use ultimately means it is useless. All that for nothing?
The solution to the data volume issue is not to limit the data display but to rethink it. The success of the mobile solution is both in the completeness of the data available and the user experience. While many editors continue to use the famous data “forms” (card with a list of information) and Web/HTML mode, data display on smartphones and tablets needs to be adapted to the devices used and above all, must be available offline.
You do not use your smartphone and your PC in the same way, so why should you have the same view of your customer data – and furthermore how is is possible to display it in the same way?
Nomalys provides an intuitive and efficient view of data in the form of mind-mapping. Thanks to our solution which is available on smartphones, tablets and PCs (iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows), salespeople can access their customer data anywhere and anytime so that they are more responsive to their customers and prospects.