subject: Mobility The New Gift To Field Force To Have Their Evenings For Themselves [print this page] Sales force automation was the invention of the seventies. The solutions became an instant success as they served two main objectives. The availability of latest information and the organized form of the information helped greater analysis and intelligent decision making. The benefits were mostly from the organizations perspective. However the field teams had the benefits of better planning and augmented execution opportunities.
With the arrival of portable equipments like the laptops, pdas and tablets, SFA also had to go portable. As always portability has brought in the advantage of time saving and an access on demand opportunity. With mobile phones now moving to browser based internet features the last barrier of convergence has fallen. And the complete potential of multi role gadgets like a mobile doubling up as a camera and the browsers in mobile good enough to access applications that do complex activities in the back end provide a never before level of ease in executing erstwhile intense tasks.
Mobile based applications and mobile friendly sales force automation solutions are about to bring in a fresh breeze of work life balance in the lives of the field force team. The process of report filing and consolidating the days work at the end of the day when one hits home is the normal practice in most field force teams. Mobile based solutions are here to ring in a change in the aforesaid process. With the advent of inexpensive internet facility from the mobile service providers, the cost of operation vis a vis fixed broad band line internet is almost similar. The possibility of immediate availability of the most recent information also helps real time planning. Reporting while on the move will truly mark the end of the days work as the person steps into his home. This apart from creating more space for quality family time will also become a great stress buster. The motivation levels of the field force are always the game changer in the performance of the sales organization. The field force performance can be expected to improve quite significantly due to this work life balance.
Mobile based/ interfaced applications also have a tendency to reduce data transfer volumes to intelligently leverage bandwidth availability. So sensible and new information is only captured through the mobile interfaced applications. This is a blessing in disguise as the field teams report interfacing time would drastically reduce and they are left alone to do the job they are best at.
Now looking back at the very objective of the advent of automation in the field force management and reporting arena, one of the main objectives was ensuring faster availability of information and ability to use the information to make strategic and operational decisions. The geo location tagging which is the new buzzword in the domain will help in managing travel expenses of the field force and ensures speedy processing of these travel expense claims from the field force.
