CRM Applications on Your Pocket PC

[Brad Adrian]

<a href="http://www.crmdaily.com/perl/story/19757.html">http://www.crmdaily.com/perl/story/19757.html</a><br /><br />This article at <a href="http://www.crmdaily.com">CRMDaily.com</a> says that PeopleSoft, one of the world's premier developers of customer relationship managment (CRM) applications, has announced support for the Pocket PC, including the Phone Edition.<br /><br />"PeopleSoft's mobile CRM app provides disconnected access to customer information and allows users to synchronize up to a year of updates in less than six minutes, according to the vendor. New features of the Pocket PC Phone Edition, which will become available later this year, include one-touch dialing."<br /><br />CRM applications are really a lot more than simple customer information tools, though. They offer everything from contact tracking to sales lead analysis and customer portfolio management. This area is going to be very big for the mobile enterprise, and the fact that PeopleSoft is involved is great news.<br /><br />My favorite part of the article, though, is where PeopleSoft's platform choice is explained:<br /><br />"Besides being an indicator of the growing demand for mobile CRM, PeopleSoft's decision to support Pocket PC speaks volumes about the battle for market share between Microsoft and Palm...Palm has a very large installed user base, and users clearly get much better battery performance with the Palm OS, according to Aberdeen Group wireless analyst Isaac Ro. On the other hand, 'the Pocket PC platform is a powerful operating system well-tailored for enterprise applications, because it offers very robust functionality compared to Palm,' he told CRMDaily."

[ricksfiona]

This was eventually going to happen. The Palm isn't powerful or versatile enough to handle the more robust application possibilities.

Being in a business that depends a lot on keeping customers happy, CRM applications are too expensive for small businesses. Coming from Peoplesoft, you know it won't be cheap.

I've thought about CRM apps for PocketPC and Palm for a couple of years. I probably have to develop my own.

[farnold]

They may have announced it, but I think it's more addressed to analysts than anything else. Companies like Peoplesoft, SAP, Oracle, Applix, SalesLogix and so forth are selling products based on a model ranging in the thousands of dollars per user. And the need these revenues to cover their development and admin costs. I doubt that any company is going to buy a software licence for a little PocketPC in this range.

[dochall]

They may have announced it, but I think it's more addressed to analysts than anything else. Companies like Peoplesoft, SAP, Oracle, Applix, SalesLogix and so forth are selling products based on a model ranging in the thousands of dollars per user. And the need these revenues to cover their development and admin costs. I doubt that any company is going to buy a software licence for a little PocketPC in this range.

Firstly they are playing catch up Siebel who have had a Pocket PC version for some time.

The Siebel architecture use an 'interpreter'. The application is actually a 'repository' file. The same repository file runs across any platform which can provide the interperter. While not a perfect analogy think Java and the Java VM.

Siebel produced the interpereter for Pocket PC at least 18 months ago. Presentation is actually pretty good.

As far as licences are concerned. You're right that nobody is going to deploy a pocket pc only infrastructure but that is not why they are selling a PPC version. They are selling it as an extra component in an overall enterprise architecture and therefore what they're interested in marginal licencee fees not absolute licence fees. The major licence investment is in the server product and the licences running in the fixed and laptop infrastructure.

The pocket pc becomes a method of carrying enterprise data in a different factor. It provides all the advantages of the pocket pc so that a sales rep doesn't have to go back to their car after a meeting and fire up a laptop. They can get instant on and have a subset of the enterprise data they need in their pocket and can control the contact management instantly.

One of the big problems with CRM is user acceptance and actually getting people to use it. The pocket pc makes is far easier for mobile workers and so they are more likely to use it rather than not bothering because the laptops too heavy, takes too long to boot, etc.

My personal experience has shown that enterprises are very interested in this capability and are willing to pay for it.

[farnold]

Hihi, how could I forget about SIEBEL? I actually had that on my PocketPC for a while. :oops:

My concern is not these companies ability to bring something. But they are interested in serious revenues. They will hardly ever fight to win 100 users for US$ 12,99 per user. I'm an absolut supporter of CRM solutions on PocketPCs - both win through this combination. But we need partners that are able to do business in this price segments... If I base a PocketPC on US$ 400 you need 20 of them to pay for one SIEBEL user... that's not gonna work out...

[dochall]

Hihi, how could I forget about SIEBEL? I actually had that on my PocketPC for a while. :oops:

My concern is not these companies ability to bring something. But they are interested in serious revenues. They will hardly ever fight to win 100 users for US$ 12,99 per user. I'm an absolut supporter of CRM solutions on PocketPCs - both win through this combination. But we need partners that are able to do business in this price segments... If I base a PocketPC on US$ 400 you need 20 of them to pay for one SIEBEL user... that's not gonna work out...

Yep, I agree. From as a personal pocket pc persepective though I do like it. Typically as the numbers that we could potentially see could run into thousands. That does the PPC marketshare good and the OEM's good.

Also the style of user that they get are going to get should make MS a different slant. One of my minor gripes about the PPC platform is that some features are aimed at techies at the expense of business productivity (vnc rather than printing for example). The feedback from these thousands of users should push a change in the thrust of the OS functionality.

I worked with a major financial services company in the UK which give all it's saleman (4000 or so) a Psion PDA. Now many of those users used the proivded specialist apps and nothing more. A significant minority however took a real interest and did a lot more with the machine than that. That constituency of power users was very vocal about any shortcomings and issues. In fact those users were using the machine far more like you and I would than a network manager using them to control a network. This kind of feedback eventually makes it back to MS and the product group.

In fact I have met both Beth and some of the guys looking after the PPC in the UK. While a moan about missing functionality from an individual (or community like PPC thoughts) may not have the desired effect, exactly the same moan from a few enterprises running a few thousand ppc's is likely to.

Somebody has produced a CRM app specifically for the Pocket PC as an enterprise device on a smaller scale (and I presume with smaller licence fees). They were posted on Thoughts as the first PPC CRM app. I again pointed out Siebel and exchanged a couple of emails from the guys that had written it.

Unfortunately I can't find the email or the post (it must have been over a year ago now) but it is out there.