Mobility use cases are some of the most popular use cases we work on. Why?
Because when you mix traditional SAP GUI, with a laptop, with a VPN, with an aircard or hotspot, you don’t get great results as far as user experience goes. When you need to take more than 2 minutes just to get into your system of record, you’ve already possibly lost a sale. This is true in a lot of fields, but I wanted to talk today about Mobile Sales people (one clarification: I am referring to sales people that rely on mobile devices to do their jobs, not people who sell mobile devices).
A Mobile Sales person wants to know everything they possibly can about their customers. They require up to the second information about the customer they’re talking to. Put yourself in a sales-person’s shoes for a moment. Think of the types of questions a customer may ask when they see them, and how hard some of those answers may be without the right information available to them at the right time.
Questions like:
- Firstly, “I put an order in 2 days ago, what’s the status?”
- Secondly, “I scheduled service for next Tuesday, can you tell me who’s been assigned?”
- And finally, “I received an invoice for X amount and I think it’s incorrect, can you check?”
To help answer these questions, we’ve developed a mobile sales experience that can be hosted on SAP BTP. It can be deployed to mobile devices. These applications connect into real-time information coming from SAP. Subsequently, they can answer all of the most common questions sales reps run into in the field.
In our user research, sales representatives work in a few different ways. Some reps like to fully plan out their route and days on a weekly basis based on needs from their customers and/or priority, others like to stick to a bi-weekly or monthly rotation to visit their customers. In knowing some of these types of things, and listening to the pain involved in setting up these routes in different ways, we’ve given these users a lot of features available via mobile device to help them be the most efficient they can be.
Below are a few examples of this application deployed to an iOS device.
Upon opening the application, I have a list of customers that are assigned to me as a sales rep. I have the ability to search by customer name here via typing or via voice to text functionality on the phone. Once I know the customer I want to interact with, I have the ability to click on the customer address or phone number. Subsequently, I then can get driving directions and/or to immediately call the customer contact.
“ I received an invoice for X amount and I think it’s incorrect, can you check?”
As a sales rep I have an assigned list of customers upon opening the application. I have the ability to search by customer name here via typing or via voice to text functionality on the phone. Once I know the customer I want to interact with, I have the ability to click on the customer address or phone number. I can then get driving directions and/or to immediately call the customer contact.
Once I’ve selected the customer I have a lot of high level information and options of where I can go. I have the ability to call or email the customer contact from our header information. I can still get driving directions from this screen as well.
From our research the first area a sales rep looks to is customer status/account status. Are you in good standing? Do you have an overdue balance? What kinds of conversations do you need to have while in person?
Next we’ve given sales reps an area to jot down notes from their meetings with customers and also the ability to add tasks to their overall task list that are customer specific.
From this point our customer sales accelerator application focuses on real-time information from SAP. You can receive information in real-time from SAP. It is up to the second sales orders, service orders, invoices, leads, and opportunities. And, it is based on wherever the conversation with the customer may go. The goal is to be able to have a relevant and informative conversation with the customer about any relevant topic. We’ve based these areas on our research. We’ve also based it on our multiple observations doing design thinking sessions for sales representatives over the years.
Lastly, we give an opportunity for a sales rep to add files or pictures to a customer account. We’ve found this is very helpful for anyone who might service that account going forward. Whether it’s a sales rep, a service technician, or others. We see people adding pictures of equipment, office locations, files gathered on ways of operating, etc… The more information we can give anyone who may interact with the customer, the better that interaction can be!
For any questions about this, SAP, or a live demonstration of our mobile sales application in action, please feel free to reach out!
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