8 Tips Salesforce Mobile for your CRM needs and Chatter

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Giving your field sales, service, and executive teams mobile access to Salesforce is one of the easiest ways for them to get instant, added value from Salesforce. You’ll boost productivity, improve data quality, and help make sure that being out of the office doesn’t mean being out of the loop. What’s the best approach for getting your people, your processes, and your devices ready to go mobile? To start, it’s important to know salesforce.com has two mobile products: Salesforce Mobile for your CRM needs and Chatter Mobile for collaboration. Follow these 8 tips and you’ll be well on your way to mobile success.



1. Leverage mobile collaboration (Chatter Mobile) – The rise of social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter have changed the way users access information, and this shift is rapidly extending to the enterprise. Products such as Salesforce Chatter give enterprise users a way to share and follow relevant people and records in an environment that’s trusted and secure. Mobile access to one’s “feed” is key to keeping employees across the organization continually informed and productive no matter where they go.



2. Use newer devices – Whenever possible, give your team the latest mobile devices. Salesforce CRM’s mobile functionality supports the most current iPhone and BlackBerry devices, and Chatter Mobile will work on an iPad. If you’re not sure whether your device is supported, consult our supported devices list. Or download our mobile apps to test on your device.



3. Identify key mobile use cases (the Sales Cloud’s mobile capabilities) – You’ve put lots of thought into customizing your core business processes to meet your organization’s needs. Why should your mobile solution be different? Before you get started, identify clear and simple mobile use cases with obvious benefits. Start by defining tasks and processes your users will need in the field, such as:

• Logging phone calls, emails, and visits on the fly

• Processing orders or updating customer cases in real time

• Accessing content in Salesforce such as presentations or brochures and forwarding them to customers Consider running a quick pilot on easy-to-deploy Mobile Lite for useful insight about which mobile use cases are key to your business



4. Less is more (the Sales Cloud’s mobile capabilities) – Mobile users rarely need access to all the data and features in Salesforce. Be selective about which applications and data you make available. Users on the go tend to use a small subset of data and repeat the same tasks over and over, such as logging calls and emails and updating opportunities or cases that relate to their territories.



Limit available data fields to what’s relevant for certain users and avoid the common trap of downloading every record a user might need. Instead, use the application’s intelligent filtering capabilities to store only relevant records on the device at any given time.



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