BYOD and Mobile CRM: The Advantages of Sales Mobility

Trends such as BYOD continue to thrive as a practice used by many companies. But what can mobile CRM bring to this new work philosophy?

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) isn’t a passing phase. It’s a logical step that intends to become a part of the basic uses and practices of employees in the office.  According to a study carried out by Intel, 70% of employees will connect to the Internet from home for professional reasons. The line between the private and professional spheres is becoming finer and finer, thus proving the growing success of BYOD.

Intel’s report revealed that 67% of US professionals take their own personal devices to work.

So just how can CRM software relate to new work policies such as these? First let’s find out more about the concept of BYOD itself and explore some of its alternatives.

BYOD and CYOD; the two alternatives for companies

Allowing employees to use their own devices to manage tasks at work has some obvious advantages:

• Worker satisfaction: using your own device means working with a tool you are more familiar with and find easier to manage.  
• Accessibility to information: employees can access information or their company’s software applications at any time since they always have their personal device to hand.
• Increase in productivity: according to a series of interviews by Dell to the heads of the IT department in various countries around the world, 74% agreed that BYOD helps increase the productivity of employees.
• Reduced costs: a study by IDC concluded that 69.1% of companies saw their CAPEX and/or OPEX costs reduced after implementing a BYOD program.
• Acquisition/talent retention: Generally, it’s considered that a company policy like BYOD can be an incentive when having to decide to start a job, or even staying on at a company, especially for employees with an advanced technological profile and hold relevant roles.

Another solution is Choose Your Own Device (CYOD), which focusses on allowing employees to choose between a series of hardware products provided by the company, set up to guarantee the safety of sensitive information.

CYOD has less advantages than BYOD, although the fact it provides greater security often helps to work in its favor, especially for certain agencies.

Mobile CRM and Enterprise Mobility; steps towards the future
If BYOD could revolutionize a strategic area of work processes, it’s undoubtedly the sales department thanks to the possibilities it brings with regards to mobility.  A CRM solution designed to run on any type of device can be a sales team’s best weapon. As proved in a study by Nucleus Research in 2013, sales reps produced a 15% increase in productivity by using a mobile CRM.

Just as we warned in our predictions for CRM in 2016, mobile CRM apps continue to develop themselves. They’re becoming less and less of a simplified version of their desktop counterpart for sales teams. More and more companies are investing in mobile.

ForceManager, the mobile CRM, is compatible with both the BYOD and CYOD philosophy. It’s multi-platform and can be used on all devices, with all operating systems. (Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry).

The development of the Internet of Things (IoT) will bring BYOD to another level. We are already seeing the first steps to this revolution with wearable devices, in which we at ForceManager are also pioneers developing the first CRM app for Apple Watch.