“By putting employees on mobile devices, we got about 30% more work out of them”
- F500 Pharmaceutical Company, Model Metrics/Salesforce.com customer

Many of our customers ask us about mobilizing their workforce. In fact, 80 percent of Model Metrics customers include smartphone and tablet adoption plans in their cloud deployment initiatives. Most need guidance on where to start – from devices to development technology to application design. Model Metrics helps enterprises develop mobile roadmaps to ensure a successful mobile cloud deployment.

We ask key questions early in the project to help decide how to best launch your mobile strategy. Picking the development technology is often the last step, not the first. Topics we discuss with your team include:

• Who are the users & what do they need to do?
• What are their job tasks prior to, during and after a customer interaction?
• What is your branding message and how does the field staff reinforce this message?
• What systems and hardware do they have today?
• Do you control the mobile device or do you support Bring Your Own Device – BYOD?
• Are users connected via WiFi or 3G? How often?
• If users are offline, what are “must have” capabilities? What could they live without until reconnected?
• If you expanded mobile access and capabilities, what could else your users be doing? What do office based field support teams do that could be moved to the field?
• What internal legacy systems do field staff use? Or need information from?
• What external applications do field staff use? Or need information from?
• Do they need transactional data or summary? Both?
• Are there new device capabilities that introduce new job tasks, such as GPS, camera, mobile mapping?

An example of using new device capability to streamline work is to pull the GPS location of the device (presumably in the user’s hands) and display the account the user is standing next to. Bypass typing the customer name and instead query the app based on GPS coordinates. Turn on the device, press “sales call” and up comes the contacts, account, opportunity and past sales information.

With this information, we can help you build a business case to secure executive sponsorship and a budget. Can you boost productivity by 5%, 15% or 25%? Can a rep or service professional cover more accounts or dedicate more time to prospecting?

Often, the first phase of the mobile deployment is a proof of concept. The proof of concept kicks off the design process, proves the technology works and gives stakeholders the opportunity to better understand the app. This is especially helpful if you have an exec on staff with what I call ‘iPad fever’. “iPad Fever’ is when an eager executive is ready to dish out the dough for devices but needs a real business case. More than once we’ve heard “We bought a bunch of iPads, but need a real business app, not just Dropbox, Gmail and Angry Birds.”

Comparing your needs to the available and rapidly advancing technology leads to the right short and long term decisions. Below are mobile app choices from Salesforce.com are listed below with their common uses.

Are you afflicted with iPad fever? We can help. To start developing your mobile cloud roadmap, contact us at info@modelmetrics.com.

Here are some technology choices to consider as you move through 2012:

Chatter

Deployment: Standard UI. Apple, Blackberry or Android App store distribution. Used online only. No cost. Common Customer Use: Private collaboration with co-workers, partners, selected customers. Read and post links, comments, pictures, etc. We have built custom Chatter screens to embed Chatter features into other apps.

Custom Apps via SDK or APIs

Deployment: Custom UI for any device. Can be online and offline. Leverage ModelFX to design user experience consistent with your marketing and brand messaging. Deploy via weblink, mobile device management tool, or iTunes App Store. Cost varies based on scope, amount of configuration and integration to legacy systems. Common Customer Use: The sky’s the limit for mobile apps. Often used with hybrid custom and custom objects populated from legacy systems to enable mobile access to legacy system data. The Digital Sales Aid app for the iPad helps (1) get started fast (3-4 weeks from kickoff to live users), (2) prove value to executives and (3) introduce mobile computing to IT. Great app to improve quality and volume of professional sales interactions. Other custom apps include ROI tools, mobile lead capture, product visualizations and product demos. A customer presented the story of the largest corporate iPad project at DreamForce 2011 in October.

Mobile Dashboards

Deployment: iTunes download for iPad to view all your dashboards while online. No cost. Common Customer Use: Handy tool to view dashboards from iPad. No re-configuration of your dashboards needed. Not as flashy as RoamBI but for no expense it’s great basic access to reports.

Viewer

Deployment: iTunes download for iPad to view your Salesforce.com objects while online. No cost. Common Customer Use: Unsupported simple online viewer to your full Salesforce.com database. No development or configuration needed to deploy. Recommend revising screens to fit new screen real estate.

Mobile and Mobile Lite

Deployment: Apple, Blackberry or Android app marketplace distribution. UI is based on your current SFDC pages. Typically need to build custom pages to appear well on mobile screens vs. PC browser. Designed for offline users. The iPhone app runs 2x on iPad, so you loose some screen real estate. No cost. Common Customer Use: Access to SFDC objects. Plan to configure special mobile pages in Salesforce.com to create basic mobile screens for your users (but don’t use VisualForce, as this does not work on these devices.)

Touch

Deployment: Coming soon. New HTML5 UI optimized for mobile devices.  Can be online and offline. Common Customer Use: Limited SFDC objects. Rumor is read only during first release in 2012. We expect to configure special pages in Salesforce.com to create appropriate mobile screens to fit the user’s screen size.

Are you afflicted with iPad fever? We can help. To start developing your mobile cloud roadmap, contact us at info@modelmetrics.com.