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Salesforce eyes Indian SMBs for Mobile CRM market
By Ojas Sharma
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Monday, 13 July 2009, 22:23 IST |
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354 crore and growing at 30-40 percent over the past three years. India being the second largest mobile market in the world provides lot of opportunities for mCRM market to grow. With 3G auction around the corner in November this year in India, there are many companies who are looking to expand their businesses with the expanding mobile internet market.
And, their target would be the nine million SMB market in India. Today, many SMBs in India are going in for SaaS CRM and agree that a proper CRM plan has helped them increase customer retention, company profits and offer better service to customers. In such a scenario, a CRM which also gives mobility will further enhance the productivity and efficiency of the organization. One of the companies which is trying to expand its mCRM market in India is Salesforce. The company has been in India for two years. They already have many clients in India including few SMBs. "We provide solution that is scalable to any organization in size. Even the smallest organizations that have internet connectivity can use Salesforce. We have interesting success story from companies like GIST [Global information system technology] in India," said Andrew Knott, Vice President, Marketing- APAC region, Salesforce. They also provide mCRM to companies like Ocimum Biosolutions and OBI express in India.
Nowadays, sales representatives need to perform many tasks such as managing appointments, collaborating with sales team members, and connecting with customer contacts and that too punctually. To serve their need companies like Salesforce are offering their product called Mobile Lite, which enables users to access the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud from their mobile devices. The Mobile Lite service allows end users to log calls and emails, update activities and tasks as well as view account and contact details, leads, opportunities, cases, solutions, assets, and dashboards, all from their mobile device. Mobile Lite offers a subset of the features available in the full mobile version, and with just a few clicks, customers can upgrade to the full functionality.
Even though, mCRM only works on smartphones like Apple, Blackberry or the ones using Windows mobile, the market for mCRM continues to expand. India is the third fastest growing smartphone market in the world. According to Gartner, Asia Pacific recorded a 2.3 percent sequential growth, reaching 7.5 million unit sales, while the overall device sales dropped by 9.2 percent. 19 million smartphones are expected to be shipped into India over the next three years, as against a global forecast of a billion by 2011.
There are many barriers to mCRM in India, but one of the most crucial one is security. A mobile theft will also mean theft of crucial information of the company. There are other critical security concerns like handset security, transmission security, backend security, etc. Also GPRS has to be affordable for the companies to provide that to its employees for free.
mCRM is based on internet and that can be one of its biggest disadvantages when it comes to India. India does not have a good mobile internet penetration. Currently most of those who have internet use GPRS and Edge technology. But Knott says that internet speed is not that critical to run mCRM. "For Salesforce, you are accessing applications on the internet. So it does not matter what network you use. All you need is GPRS in a mobile device to access it. Of course, it will run better on 3G broadband but it runs smoothly on GPRS as well," he added. He is optimistic that the availability of 3G will definitely change the internet scenario in India.