Four Reasons to Make the Most of Mobile Analytics

Recent technology advancements have allowed us to move from a traditional work space to a more agile work environment. With this in mind, is your company making the most of its mobile capabilities? If your employees spend any time working outside the office, chances are, they might not be as productive as they could be.; In a study of British workers, 75 percent of workers admit they are less productive away from their desks. That’s an astonishing three-quarters of workers. Of those surveyed, 44 percent said that the lack of technology suited to their tasks hinders their productivity.; A way for salespeople to overcome the “lack of technology” issue is through the use of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. Cloud-based CRM lets your team enter customer and prospective customer information, track sales activities, and monitor deals as they move through the pipeline. Mobile CRM applications are cloud-based with customisable mobile dashboards to help sales reps see their progress towards goals in sales activities (such as number of calls or contacts) and sales numbers.; Your sales team needs to be able to smoothly transition from office to mobile and going mobile with the right tools can improve business intelligence, increase data security, ensure more accurate data, and increase productivity. All of this mobile reporting on a mobile dashboard boils down to increased win rates.

A sales rep has lunch with a client and gains insight into company needs and discovers key decision makers. The ideal situation is to capture this information quickly and effectively. However, this rep isn’t using a CRM and therefore writes it on a piece of paper and forgets it in the cab ride home, this valuable information is now lost.

Without a good mobile platform for your company’s applications, your company data risks being inaccurate. Data isn’t uploaded to a central repository, data controls aren’t in place. Worse yet, no data is entered because there is no mobile app to enter it in.

More than half of all enterprises recently surveyed by Mobile Helix estimate that productivity in their organisations would increase by 36 percent or more if all of their enterprise apps were made mobile. The survey also found that only 22 percent of enterprise applications (such as ERP, CRM, or custom apps) could be accessed easily from mobile devices.

Because businesses rely on analytic insights for continued progress, the importance of mobile data collection is imperative. The ability to work across desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone makes sales, mobile CRM data entry, and mobile business analytics second-nature.

An efficient mobile data collection system allows for more accurate data. By having the ability to work from a cloud-based SaaS CRM platform, your company can keep accurate, up-to-the minute mobile business intelligence.

The ability to enter orders, contact information, and actionable items by phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop gives all employees a stake in keeping data up-to-date. When data is entered and updated in real-time, the entire company has access to information. Thus, decisions made on inventory, purchasing, and staffing can be made with the best data possible.

Not being able to access company data, software, and analytics from mobile locations isn’t just inconvenient. It poses the threat of unsecured and inaccurate data. When employees create their own spreadsheets or other documents to use across devices, the chance of this information being compromised increases dramatically.

Lack of controlled access to company information is a real threat to security when employees work on their mobile devices. Using company-wide cloud software means data is secured. An Infor report explains, “Using cloud services means that your data is better protected...Large-scale services are all much better than we are at avoiding data loss from gear failure, keeping software up to date, upgrading hardware, and constantly improving security.” Malicious code infects more than 11.6 million mobile device users, but large-scale, cloud-based mobile data platforms serve as a gatekeeper and can can push out updates and security patches instantaneously across devices.

While some data threats are malicious, over one-third of data security breaches come from employee mistakes. According to a Forrester Research report, 36 percent of the respondents said threat of data security breaches were a result of employee mistakes. Mobile analytics allows data to be accessed through a mobile platform where a system administrator controls access.

Mobile data is more secure when every employee works on the same cloud-based mobile analytics platform because access to the software is controlled and data is secured. Of course, executives and system administrators alike should preach the importance of password hygiene, a practice important whether in or out of the office.

Additionally, when multiple employees are making decisions based on data that isn’t updated in real-time across the company, the chances for error are enormous.

Consider, for instance, that a regional sales rep promises product to a client based on inventory information she received that morning. In the meantime, another sales rep promised the same inventory to another client. Raw materials are on backorder and won’t be available for production for another month. One client (and one sales rep) are likely to become upset over the shortage of product, but the information wasn’t available at the time the order was placed.

Here’s another scenario: while at lunch, a sales rep receives a call from an upset customer. Because the rep doesn’t have access to customer service call records, the conversation is disjointed. The customer has to explain his problem--again--and gets the sense there’s NO communication within the company. Major damage control will need to be done to keep this customer.

When everyone in the company has access to the same information, better decisions can be made, better actions can be taken, and better customer service is the result.

Mobile reporting holds key advantages for sales. Up-to-date reports, progress towards goals, deals in the pipeline, and actionable items can be shown on mobile analytics reports. Salesforce mobile dashboards allow users to “drill down” into each visual report to better understand the numbers behind the graphs.

Mobile analytic reports can be customisable and allow sales teams to see both leading and lagging indicators. While lagging indicators show past data such as sales per period, leading indicators allows sales managers and their teams to make real-time, up-to-the minute course corrections such as increasing the number of calls or other client interactions. CRM Mobile analytics provide accurate, company-wide business intelligence.

Because most employees will work remotely at some point, but most companies don’t have the tools necessary to help their employees be productive. Businesses need to embrace a secure and productive mobile platform. The correct tools, like a company-wide CRM platform, will increase the productivity and security of your company’s data. When everyone in the company shares the same information, the customer experience is improved.

Mobile business intelligence through cloud-based CRM software hold particular advantages for sales teams, as they are able to monitor their progress towards goals and actionable items. Mobile dashboards give sales teams real-time analytics to inform their sales practices.

The bottom line about going mobile is just that: the bottom line. When sales teams use mobile CRM for data collection, reporting, and mobile analytics, sales increase. In fact, 65 percent of sales reps who use mobile CRM met their sales goals, according to a study by Inoppl. The telling statistic about the effectiveness of mobile CRM is this: 78 percent of those who didn’t use CRM did not achieve their targets.