What is mobile CRM?
Mobile CRM, or mobile customer relationship management, enables those working in the field or remote employees to use mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to access customer data and customer accounts wherever they are.
Mobile CRM attempts to enable employees to do everything they would from a laptop, but with streamlined menus and fewer swipes and clicks, given the small real estate of a mobile device. The best CRM software is designed with user efficiency and intuitive navigation in mind, without compromising feature sets.
Benefits of mobile CRM
Mobile CRM has been particularly beneficial for departments such as sales. Its benefits include the following:
- Lets sales reps attend client meetings with CRM data about the client at the ready and in real time.
- Creates greater intradepartmental communication and integration, where those in the field can more easily communicate with those at the office, send documents and message through team collaboration software, like Slack or Microsoft Teams.
- Opens up business processes to workers beyond full-time employees, enabling contractors and company partners to gain access to information without logins and passwords associated with employees.
- Opens up the four walls of the business to a larger array of stakeholders, along with team collaboration software.
New business intelligence and analytics tools, such as data visualization software, have further enhanced the mobile customer relationship management experience by providing easy-to-access, digestible data that sales reps can access in real time to understand gaps in performance, territories where they are performing well and so on.
Challenges of mobile CRM
Mobile CRM software also faces several challenges. These include the following:
- Can pose security risks by placing client and customer data on mobile devices. Stolen phones and tablets can jeopardize customer account information.
- Presents data privacy and compliance concerns.
- Requires businesses to develop strong policies around how privacy for all parties should be handled, and then build it into the mobile device management strategy.
Considerations for buying mobile CRM software
Buying considerations for mobile CRM software include ease of deployment, ease of use, security, user experience and advanced feature sets. Development for mobile CRM platforms often takes a mobile-first approach, where software development builds features for mobile platforms first, then integrates them into desktop versions.
Editor's note: This article was originally published in 2021. Informa TechTarget editors revised it in 2025 to improve the reader experience.
