Listen to my podcast with Greg Goldfarb, the VP and General Manager of Enterprise Applications for Ribbit, a BT company. In this podcast we cover mobile CRM technology: who's using it, how it's being used, and what works best.
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PS: Now, first of all, how are mobile sales professional leveraging customer relationship management today and exactly what were they doing before?
GG: Right. So I think the biggest shift in terms of how people are leveraging CRM from a mobile perspective is that it's become much more of a dynamic input/output mechanism and interface as compared to before. So now people have the expectation that they can easily enter information using whatever mode of communication is most convenient whether that means just talking and having that data flow in. In some cases, typing when they're somewhere they can do that as well as get dynamic information out of CRM.
So on a more automated basis -- more contextual basis have the ability to have information pushed to them that's most relevant to what they're doing. Whereas before, it was very much of I have to login to something and actually dig for information and it was really primarily a view only experience more so than something that was really a dynamic tool that helped salespeople get their job done while they were on the go.
So essentially a smart Salesforce. Now, can you tell me what industries exactly are having the greatest benefit from CRM?
Sure. So it really does cross quite a few verticals. I think that the characteristics that define really the hotspots are situations where one, obviously, you got sellers or people in areas like professional services, or sales engineering, or field services that are on the go quite a bit or spend more time away from their computer than in front of it. So people who are iPhone and Blackberry killer users is one characteristic.
But the other really has to do with the nature of the business and the value of having real time information so that in a lot of ways is defined by how transactional is the business. So we see lots of interest in segments like financial services where the deal flow and the number of customer touches on a daily basis is quite high. There are other segments like manufacturing or even media sales, which are also fairly transactional. And there is like software is also a fairly high user area as well so it's really defined by areas where there's loads of people who are out in the field away from their computer and there is a high volume of customer touch on a daily basis.
And then the third area is when you got organizations that have the need for collaboration between people who are out in the field, and people who are maybe back in that headquarters, or back in an office location and you really need rapid collaboration between those two of groups.
Now, can you tell me a little bit about Ribbit for Salesforce and how is it unique and exactly what business problems it addresses?
Sure. So Ribbit for Salesforce is the only service that connects mobile communications to Salesforce.com. And it solves some fundamental age-old problems with sales and CRM adoption by enabling people who are on the go and not in front of computers could easily call in information into the CRM system. So instead of having to remember to login and type notes or type updates, I can just call the information in while I'm driving or right when I get out of the meeting and it gets converted to text enclosed to the right place automatically.
And it also solves the problem of how do we as a company get information from the CRM system to people who are out in the field very effectively and very efficiently and we do that by literally enabling the CRM system to distribute information by text messaging. So we really enable businesses to get full use out of CRM across all their employees including those that are in the field for any unique way and we do it by leveraging modes of communication that people who are mobile are very accustomed to using.
People are talking on their phones all the time now you can talk information into CRM and more and more people on mobile phones are using text messaging as almost like instant messaging and now we enable businesses to manage text messaging so that they can quickly get information out from their business software environment to people on the go. And in total, it really enables higher sales efficiency.
What exact app or feature have you found that helps mobile sales professionals the best?
So the number one trigger for interest really boils down to the ability to very efficiently and easily get information in. so this idea of being able to call in sales information and dictate and have what I say convert to text and flow into the right CRM Salesforce.com account is a very powerful capability because it really enables much faster information flow which enables better customer responsiveness, better collaboration so that is typically the trigger point for customer interest. More and more, we're seeing quite a bit of interest in this ability to leverage text messaging as an information channel and enabling businesses to actually manage text messaging.
In many cases for the first time so I can send whether its sales events or business tasks that need to get done, I can automatically have those sent via text messaging. I can also send entire groups messages or alerts via text messaging from the CRM system so the inbound voice to text on the inbound side is quite powerful and then SMS from CRM out to my employees is quite useful on the outbound side.
Interesting. Now, what do you see for the future of mobile CRM?
Well, I think one of the biggest shifts that's taking place and clearly evidenced by Salesforce.com is doing with chatter is really that CRM is becoming a much more collaborative kind of environment versus a sales reporting system. And in parallel with that, we're seeing quite a bit of growth in terms mobile web applications.
So I think one of the most exciting things is this convergence of CRM really becoming in a way more social and more of a conversational application combined with much better web browsing and web capabilities from a mobile device. And the two of those together I think will really change the dynamics and change the ability for people to really stay connected, and drive the business process, and enable companies to fully leverage CRM no matter where their employees are.
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