Will Mobile CRM Finally Break Through in 2006?

CRM News wonders if 2006 will finally be the year that mobile CRM takes off. Some of the key issues remaining are "securing mobile access to customer data, shipping and stock information, as well as vendor and company readiness to deploy."

According to Visiongain, "the market for mobile CRM is ready to build on traction from 2004 and 2005 and by 2007," it "should be reasonably robust on a global scale." Visiongain "predicted that mobile CRM will grow from its current portion of 10 percent of total CRM revenues to 20 percent by 2010 with steady growth forecast as the market matures."

Jonathan Spira at Basex said, "More and more customers are realizing how important it is to get just-in-time information regardless of where it resides to serve the customer better. To not support mobile systems of CRM would be a distinct disadvantage in the competitive marketplace."

Gartner's Ken Dulaney took a less bullish approach. He said, "We still have not seen from the suite vendors a basic understanding or demonstration that mobile technologies are fundamentally different from desktop technologies. What we're looking for first is a clear recognition of how mobile technology is fundamentally different than desktop technology."

Roger Entner at Ovum noted that "while all technologies tend to go mobile along with increasingly mobile workers, mobile CRM may not meet the growth expectations for the coming year." He said, "A big issue is proper integration and is the company really ready for it. You have to change your business and your approach."

Spira countered, "I think everyone recognizes that a certain amount of knowledge workers are mobile, and that customers expect people to have up-to-date information with them, regardless of venue. After 15 years, there is simply no excuse to not having this kind of technology available."