Evaluating SFA Functionality for Smartphones

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Overview
As smartphones become standard equipment for salespeople, we describe useful sales
force functionality to deliver to the mobile device.
Key Findings

Lack of screen real estate will remain a key limiting form factor for deploying most
sales force automation functionality on a smartphone.

Highly data-manipulative-based applications, such as sales configuration or proposal
generation, will remain poor options for deploying over a smartphone.

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Sales presentations: This is useful to view a presentation that a salesperson is
about to present. It is not practical for a salesperson to draft, modify and share
presentations and associated content, including graphics, Excel tables and text.

Proposal generation: As is the case with sales presentations, salespeople will see
value in the ability to review sales proposals, but modifying sales proposals is not
practical on a smartphone.

Sales configuration: Sales configuration offers need assessment exercises,
defining unique combinations of products, services and associated options that align
with stated requirements of prospects and clients, and generating quotes on pricing,
discounts and customized financing plans. The complexity of navigating a sales
configurator is beyond the ergonomics of a smartphone

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Not Practical

Pipeline analyses: Pipeline analyses consist of generating and reviewing indicators
of pipeline health, volume and status of prospects and indicators of opportunities
that are likely to close. This is not an activity that lends itself to a smartphone
screen, nor is it something a salesperson will do "on the go."

Sales analytics: This feature enables ad hoc querying, multidimensional analyses,
advanced visualization and iterative discovery processes for investigating trends and
root causes for sales outcomes. As with pipeline analyses, this is not an activity that
lends itself to a smartphone screen, nor is it something a salesperson will do on the
go.

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Simple reporting/dashboards: These provide static information and graphs on
key topics such as sales compensation and performance against plan, and support
predefined filters for summarizing and sorting information. This feature is more to
help salespeople possibly do some causal planning during downtime between calls.

Account review: This feature enables a review of account details and relationship
maps, and enables analyses and development of strategies, tactics and action items
for opportunity identification and account growth. Included in this feature is the
ability to view by priority, sales territory, product line or other attribute.

Voice or group voice: Voice is the "killer application" for mobile sales force
automation, and may include group voice. The IT organization must also recognize
that instant-message clients on mobile devices will begin to offer voice or group
voice functionality as network capabilities converge. Smartphones are designed for
ease of voice use first and data interfaces second, enabling the evaluation of time
spent during a business day on voice calls versus the number of accesses of data to
make a final determination.

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ability to quickly see an order and put a stop on it will ensure that the incorrectly
entered order will not proceed.

Simple deal review: This is useful for salespeople to conduct price checks for
ceiling, target and floor prices, with some simple deal scoring.

Special price requests: Because getting a response to a special price request has
a tendency to take longer than a salesperson requires, starting this process as soon
as possible is important to reduce customer response time. For industries where
salespeople have a high degree of special price requests that require multiple
approval levels, automating special price requests from the smartphone will have
value.

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Value-Add Functionality

Sales order management: The first level of order management is the ability to
quickly look up order information by order number, customer name or status. The
information should be displayed with summary information to avoid screen clutter.
The second level of capability is to enable order capture and entry. The applicability
order entry information on a smartphone will directly relate to fulfillment
considerations and to the complexity of the order. Complex orders with high
configurability are not good candidates for smartphone order entry. No matter how
complex the order, a quick-stop function from a handheld device will provide value.
In some cases, the salesperson entered an order on the laptop and shut it down.
Rather than waiting for the laptop to reboot or send an e-mail or call someone, the

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Tasks/to-dos: These offer the ability to review, modify and designate as complete
common or regularly scheduled events linked to the sales force automation system.

Today's tasks: This should be a summary view of a salesperson's appointments
and tasks for the day.

After-call tasks: Often, when a salesperson leaves a sales call, he or she has
committed to deliver content, or possibly to schedule a follow-up meeting with a
subject matter expert. Salespeople desire the ability to have a quick approach to
designate follow-up action from the smartphone to trigger the activity, and to
receive confirmation that the task was completed.

Wizards: These help salespeople navigate little-used or new menus, or those that
are repetitious — such as "add new prospect entry," for example, to consume an email
and autopopulate a sales force automation data entry, or to attach a voice mail
left by the prospect to a sales opportunity.

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Recent/top views: Recent/top views are navigational aids to help salespeople
quickly access information they may have viewed recently or often. Salespeople are
frequently walking from meetings to their cars, or are between flights in airports, so
any navigational aid to quickly get to information is helpful.

Alerts: A smartphone is always guaranteed to be on a salesperson. Therefore, it is
the best communication medium to communicate alerts associated with their
accounts, such as order shipment, organization changes and customer acquisitions.

Quick communication hyperlinks: Phone (link for quick dial), e-mail (link to
direct e-mail function) from contact opportunity data is a highly desirable usability
feature for salespeople.

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Customer contact data: This is the most static of the application data and can be
synched on a handheld or laptop before leaving the office. In addition to name,
address and phone contact details, call notes and follow-up details from previous
meetings or leads can be accessed.

Sales opportunity data: The baseline view of opportunity data should be a
summary. This is important for usability due to the reduced size of the screen on
the device. The data fields visible in the summary should be those that are most
valued for the sales representative and, ideally, should be self-personalized. From
the summary view, the salesperson needs the option to drill down into further detail
to review and specify the progress of sales efforts with specific prospects and clients
within the context of stages or phases based on predefined sales methodologies.
Detailed opportunity information would include opportunity status, product mix
owned by the customer or presented to the customer, and activities accomplished

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Calendar: The key for all salespeople during the day is the calendar, which informs
them where and when their sales calls are scheduled. The calendar on the
smartphone must not only show the salesperson when and where sales calls are to
occur, but also provide a quick link to customers and opportunity data regarding the
call, including late-breaking information about the customer that could affect the
sales interaction. For smartphones with GPS devices, quick links to maps and
directions are also desirable. The ability to leverage GPS/geographic information
system (GIS) information to identify opportunistic ways to increase "face time,"
including searching for prospects/clients in an area when unplanned visits happen,
or to recover time when a client or prospect fails to show or changes plans. The
overall gold standard for the calendar is tight integration between a native client
calendaring application and a sales application server.