If, as analysts' reports suggest, CRM projects often fail to live up to expectations, it seems reasonable to be sceptical about the chances of mobile CRM applications delivering a return. Beyond novelty value, will customers really think text messages add to service? Is the salesforce even going to use, let alone find value in, a wireless PDA (personal digital assistant)?
CRM vendors believe they will. The penetration of mobile devices is now at 50 per cent or more in many countries around the world, where they are already part of people's everyday lives. Surely, mobile CRM applications that make a job easier or add a service that is wanted will take off too? But the trick is identifying what mobile CRM can usefully do and delivering it without compromising that usability.
"People are now giving serious thought to how mobile CRM can add value to their organisations", says Charles Grover, director of European CRM business at PeopleSoft. So-called point applications would enable users to view bills or the status of orders, inquiries or shipments. More sophisticated applications would enable customers, suppliers, or partners to place orders, and configure products and services. But when will it happen?
Some say the current lack of bandwidth is a problem. Others argue that poor back office integration, to knit customer data together across all channels, stymies convenience. "The technology barriers to mCRM are undeniable. Much of the technology that mCRM depends on is still in its infancy or gives what is perceived as poor user performance that has not lived up to expectations," says Celia Gaffney, managing director at Atos KPMG Consulting.
Paul Scott, director of Round, the UK-based CRM consultancy, says a highly fragmented marketplace is putting customers off. "Companies want integrated solutions, whereas today over 50 per cent of the marketplace is occupied by more than 100 vendors," he says. Consolidation will follow which means that the future of any one mCRM application is hard to guarantee.
Others say the problem lies with the design of mCRM applications themselves. "Understanding mobile CRM requires a precise definition of its scope," says David Tansley, principal in the UK communications practice at Deloitte Consulting.
"Some elements of CRM do not lend themselves to mobile enabling, as the activities would rarely be performed in a mobile context." For example, customer support that is given from an office would gain little from a mobile application, whereas real-time confirmation of pricing and availability could benefit from mCRM's immediacy.
Alternatively, Mr Tansley continues, the appropriateness of the device should be considered too. "Some applications would most likely be used when stationary. Such applications would reside on a PC, and could be wireless enabled through simply providing a GPRS card.
"But some functions require instant access, on a PDA, since the time required to boot up a PC would negate the benefit." The trade-off for ubiquity is variable quality. CRM applications therefore need to be designed so that they minimise the reliance on a continuous connection," he adds.
It is not that CRM vendors lack imagination in developing solutions - the result of multiple partnerships between themselves, telcos and hardware manufacturers. The trouble is that too often what is on offer looks like a solution in search of a problem, and not the other way round.
"While it is encouraging to see the key CRM vendors and device manufacturers getting together to provide partnered solutions, it still comes down to throwing technology at a problem which most organisations aren't convinced can be resolved through mobile CRM," says Peter Weare of PA Consulting Group. He says the focus must be on identifying where access to knowledge in the field is most beneficial.
It may be that the established CRM players are not best placed to develop mCRM since they are tied to applications that are not effective when mobile. "The prospect of mobile CRM is clearly making some of the established CRM players justifiably nervous," says Adrian Williamson, principal software engineer at Graham Technology, the UK-based solutions vendor. "The inapplicability of many existing CRM solutions to high volume self-service or to resource-limited roving devices means they must adopt a damage limitation strategy," he says.
This would typically involve trying to draw new and existing customers into a short-term, piecemeal proprietary world until their solutions are re-engineered and adapted for mobile use. Failure to achieve this could see customers migrating their mCRM needs to an alternative vertical solution.
However, David Bradshaw, Ovum's lead analyst on CRM, believes that the emergence of specialist mCRM vendors would be a retrograde step. "One of the points of CRM is to make full use of all the data you have about the customer," he says. "In any business, that data is already spread over multiple sources. Adding yet another system to this mish-mash makes it harder to integrate your customer view or processes.
"But if the big telco players impose their will on mCRM, via partnerships, the quality of the applications themselves could suffer. Tight alliances might reduce device flexibility, which is what mobility should be all about. "Mobile access to CRM applications should be ubiquitous," says Keith Wagstaff, CRM and e-business practice manager at Logica, the UK-based IT services and consulting group. "[But] it would appear that in order for the partnership to be of value to its participants there would be preferential support for each other's products.
For customers that want mobile access to CRM services this would seem to limit choice, he says. For example, getting mobile access to account details might be possible only for those who buy a particular mobile device.
