By Paul Ziliak, co-founder, xkzero

Your company has decided take the lead this year in your industry and plans to modernize your sales team by equipping them with smart phones and tablets that do more than automate email, calendars and address books. Ownership has given the green light to you as the sales manager to find and acquire the best mobile apps for your business that actually integrate with your ERP system. Excited? You bet you are! Nervous? More than a little, because even though you have spelled out the goals and calculated the ROI, you don’t want to get this investment wrong. Frankly, if it doesn’t work you are going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Decision points abound, but the field of mobilized ERP for sales people is not rife with how-to guides and requirements checklists, so we hope you will find this useful. Can we guarantee that you will find the perfect fit for your distribution needs? No, but we do know that the more informed you are the more likely your project with succeed.

Mobile Snapshot
Here are some capabilities to consider when selecting a mobile app:

• First, confirm that your ERP/CRM system can integrate with available mobile apps out-of-the-box. Remember that a mobile app designed to “integrate with any ERP” is not designed to integrate primarily with your ERP.
• Integrate customer info
• Integrate inventory info
• Allow mobile selling
• Enable B2B mobile self-service
• Accept customer payments
• Provide survey management
• Allow photo tagging
• Enable route management
• Automate order delivery
• Optimize trade show sales
• Support bar code scanning
• Provide credit card swipe support
• Accommodate a pricing system that works for you (user-based, device-based, by company, etc.)

Goals for Mobile
Evaluate whether a mobile app can improve your business in these ways:

• Increase/accelerate revenue
• Provide employees flexible options
• Enable customer self-service
• Improve customer service
• Speed up order-delivery-payment process
• Streamline various processes
• Eliminate redundant processes

Mobile Management
Determine which of these specifications that are right for your company:

• Native ERP-based data management vs. Cloud-based data management
• Ability to control features and data by User/Role
• Multi-language support
• Multi-company support
• Inherent business intelligence/reporting

Intended Use
Think through these ways that your company may utilize the app:

• Access at a customer or prospect’s location
• Access at a trade show or conference
• Access anywhere outside the office
• Connect with sales or service counter from your office
• Conduct retail point-of-sale transactions
• Use for event selling

Mobile Customer / Contact Features
Decide which of these actions are important to your company:

• Organize by customer or by contact
• Add customers on-the-fly
• Add contacts on-the-fly
• Integrate with map
• Integrate with email
• Integrate with phone
• Integrate with calendar
• Display multiple ship-to locations
• View customer/item last purchase/history
• View open sales orders
• View open accounts receivable
• Control fields displayed by User

Mobile Inventory
Decide which of these items you need to view when tracking inventory:

• Item warehouse quantities
• Item images/drawings/diagrams
• Miscellaneous non-inventory items
• Price and cost information

Mobile Sales and Delivery
Select the processes you would like to handle for sales and delivery:

• Manage by route
• Manage by territory
• Manage by vehicle
• Manage by user/sales rep/driver
• Create quotes
• Create orders
• Create invoices
• Create credits/sales returns
• Create inventory exchanges
• Conduct inventory check-out/check-in with inventory reconciliation
• Reconcile payments
• Follow native ERP pricing rules
• Capture signature
• Print and email receipts/orders
• Control price overrides

Mobile B2B
Decide which of these business-to-business-friendly features you need:

• Provide select customers with self-service app
• Support rules regarding data access

Mobile Payments
Determine which of these mobile payment methods and features you prefer:

• Receive payments against open invoices
• Accept payments against new orders/invoices
• Check
• Credit card
• Cash
• Supports payment reconciliation

If we can help you grow please contact us at info@xkzero.com.