A Magic Trident -- Mobile Tablets, CRM, and Enterprise 2.0

In a recent iPad/iPhone Meetup group meeting there was a wide-ranging talk about the “best opportunities for iPads in enterprise software” (a topic I keep bringing up, which doesn’t seem to be irritating people yet).

CRM, collaboration, and Enterprise 2.0 were the crowd favorites. Gartner has their famous “Magic Quadrant” analysis, so without further ado, here is our Magic Trident.

Why are these tools a winning combination?

1. CRM is customer-focused and therefore sales-focused. In a recessionary environment, any effort to improve or extend sales and customer relationships will be supported by management.
2. Enteprise 2.0 is about improving unstructured communication between employees in an organization. This type of communication is extraordinarily important to process of communicating with customers and closing sales.
3. The lack of mobility and frustration with ease of use often blocks participation by all employees in the corporate social discussion. This has been a thorn in the side off the CRM world for years … organizations implement CRM software and then the sales reps don’t use it. Enterprise 2.0 faces the same resistance. If the iPad provides essential improvement in usage patterns by employees (as we’ve discussed here) then it provides a boost to CRM and Enterprise 2.0.
4. The front-line sales representatives are highly mobile and need a convenient tool to keep them linked to the back office. The iPad provides that tool.
5. The iPad is being used for much more than just CRM or data gathering. It’s being used now as a tool for sales presentations, sales prospecting, and audience participation. This means it is inherently more valuable than laptops and again, we can expect sales reps to embrace it more fully. Increased adoption by sales reps translates into an overall improvement in the quality of data.
6. The iPad or other tablets become the conduit for feeding the social knowledge accumulated by Enterprise 2.0 systems to the employee who is most important to the company – the sales representative facing customers. The CRM system is crucial because it provides a structure/context that the sales rep will understand and which will prevent social knowledge from being delivered too quickly or at the wrong time.
7. The combination of these 3 factors give us a way to monetize Enterprise 2.0 information via CRM, injected into the sales process via the iPad. This increases the value of Enterprise 2.0 and CRM to organizational leaders.

Why IPad any more than laptop?

Since E 2.0 and CRM have been around for years, and the iPad is a newcomer, we need to explain the iPad’s equal footing. I imagine people saying “Why are mobile tablets a crucial part of this picture? Sales reps already carry laptops and already have access to CRM and E 2.0 information. The tablet plays no pivotal role.”

I think the iPad does play a pivotal role.

The touchscreen isn’t just easier and lighter-weight…it is a fundamental improvement in sales customer communication. This point is subtle and hard to explain, but so many sales reps are raving about this quality. Something about the form factor of an iPad makes it so much more useful compared to a laptop.

Laptops are akward. Any awkwardness in the sales call is poison, something to be avoided. On the other hand, iPads are lovely to handle and use, and this quality also impacts the sales rep’s attitude. iPads can be handed to the customer, and can easily be passed around a group. This can create the all-important first steps towards customer commitment.

As one sales rep said: “there is something powerful about handing an iPad to your customer and letting them drive the presentation with their own hands. It perks up the whole sales call. Maybe it’s some kind of psychology trick. I don’t know but I am using it ”

(Edit 10/26/2010): For a great discussion of this see "Enterprise 2.0 and CRM, Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together" and another announcement from the Enterprise 2.0 conference.