Identify, Acquire, and Retain Customers with a CRM

If you are a tiny business owner - whether you have no employees or 100 - chances are, you have a smartphone. Whether it is a Blackberry, iPhone, Palm Pre, or the Motorola Droid, you very certainly depend on your phone to manage your calendar, read your electronic mail, check the weather, catch up on the news, update your Facebook page, play some games, and possibly even take an actual phone call or. Did you know, however, that you can now also operate your whole business using that same tool?

Plenty of ERP solutions are now available as fully featured apps on numerous smartphones, the Blackberry and iPhone (and, increasingly, the Droid). Field technicians and sales representatives as well as the ever-mobile CEO can all access their company's operations through secure applications custom-made specifically for mobile platforms. Heck, even the Army's getting in on the action.

Limited screen size. Smartphone screens are getting wider and bigger, with resolution rates increasing at an impressive rate, but they still cannot compare with the text size on even a tiny netbook. For plenty of mobile workers, smartphones may be useful for speedy electronic mail checks and to look something up online, but it can be a visual strain to depend on them exclusively for both reading and writing documents and forms.

Limited keyboard size. Even the touchscreens available on some smartphones can be clunky to make use of, and plenty of keyboards are tiny to do extensive typing and knowledge entry.

Limited battery life. As smartphones get, well, smarter, they eat up battery power more quickly. They can only hope that as the expertise improves, battery life will increase as well, but for now, the more work you need of your smartphone, the less time you have between charging times.

Inconsistent coverage. I am sure you have heard all about the antenna issues with the new iPhone four, but issues can arise with coverage areas as well. Your smartphone connects to the Net using your cellular provider's network, and in the event you happen to be in a remote area with limited coverage, you'll be unable to connect to the net, not to mention your company's ERP process.

Limited global coverage. Plenty of US-based smartphones nowadays work on abroad cellular networks, but not all of them. In the event you do travel internationally - and yes, Canada counts as "international" - make sure that you understand how to make use of your smartphone abroad and how much more it will cost you to do so. If it is wi-fi enabled, you may be able to basically use that functionality in lieu of connecting to a cellular network, but it might still be better and cheaper overall to basically tote your laptop computer or netbook with you and basically connect to a wi-fi hotspot, whether you are in Singapore or South Africa. Enterprise resource planning 

Of work, despite all the hype about mobile computing, smartphones do have limitations that ERP customers must take in to consideration when deciding whether or not to replace their laptops with the latest hot gadget.