Wednesdays With Will: Your Mobile Workforce

By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist

Over the past 10 or so years, the mobile workforce is a term that has been heralded as the “modern” way of doing business. I always found this amusing because as long as there’s been commerce, the mobile workforce has been around in some form or another. The first example that comes to mind would probably be the door-to-door salesperson. A case can be made that the way we approach the mobile workforce has evolved though. This was typically dictated by the technology of the time.

Many of you may remember when the PalmPilot and Blackberry devices started popping up in the late 90’s. They were innovative for their day but comparing those devices to modern day smartphones makes their capabilities seem very limited. If you think about it though, it set the stage for “business productivity in real life”. No longer were you tethered to a desk or office to perform certain business tasks such as sending and receiving emails or scheduling appointments in your calendar. The technology expanded what we were capable of accomplishing outside of that setting. But it wasn’t about employees becoming more “mobile”. It was about having the ability to interact and collaborate with your colleagues and clients regardless of your location.

The performance of mobile phones in the past 5 year have surpassed these earlier devices in leaps and bounds. Tablets have expanded the mobile platform even further. As mobile devices became more prevalent and, more importantly, the preferred method of accomplishing tasks, solutions are created to accommodate this behavior.

The ability for your Sales, Marketing and Services teams to effectively communicate in real time is imperative for business today. More and more business owners are asking for ways to improve operational transparency. A great way to accomplish this is to leverage a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It’s a great platform for collaboration in the office but more importantly, it’s optimized for mobile use (smartphone, tablet, etc.) when on the go. Two examples would be a salesperson that spends most of their time out of the office talking with potential clients or your professional services team that is usually at a job site. As we discussed earlier, the mobile workforce isn’t a new concept. The most important part is how you empower your employees when they are outside of the office.

As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…

About the author:

Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.

Other articles by Will Marchesano:

• Wednesdays With Will: Your Mobile Workforce

• Wednesdays With Will: Voice Of The Customer

• Wednesdays With Will: Visualize Your Business

• Wednesdays With Will: Business Resolutions

• Wednesdays With Will: Analyzing Business Analytics

• Wednesdays With Will: The Importance Of Social Engagements

• Wednesdays With Will: Improving The Service In Customer Service

• Wednesdays With Will: Empowering Your Sales Team With Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Wednesdays With Will: From Marketing to Smarketing Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Technology Making Dreams A Virtual Reality

• Wednesdays With Will: Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Office 365 – Working In Perfect Harmony

• Wednesdays With Will: Making Your Business Intelligent

For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.