Could Mobility Suites Help ERP Move toward The Future?
ClickSoftware is positioned as a service optimization provider rather than an ERP company, but their latest innovation could foreshadow some progressive improvements in the ERP market. The company recently released a standalone mobility suite that aims to close the gap between the back offices and the employees in the field.
ClickSoftware has offered mobile capabilities in their ServiceOptimizatoin Suite for a couple years, but the company decided to offer the detached mobile suite due to the heightened interest in mobility they saw among their customers. Mobility Suite will connect the back-office with the field representatives through mobile workflows, optimized routing, real-time inventory data, time and attendance recording, and more. Interestingly, ClickSoftware noted that while many people prefer to get mobile platforms from a vendor they’re using for CRM, they found plenty of people looking elsewhere for those capabilities, and their seizing the opportunity to land and expand.
William McNeill of AMR Research (who evidently partnered with ClickSoftware on the development of Mobility Suite) told CRM Magazine that the product is about “getting to where technicians are, what they’re doing, the parts they’re using,†and ultimately helping them make the best decisions efficiently. Mobility Suite also offers a jumpstart on billing processes that might previously have taken weeks to fulfill. McNeill states that this expedited turnaround with curry favor with customers who’ll be able to explain billing to their CFOs within a number of days.
Ultimately, ClickSoftware’s Mobility Suite isn’t entirely a standalone product, because it does rely on information from desktop databases, but it’s a smart offering and it bodes well for the ERP market, which has been stuck in the on-premise past. It’ll be interesting to see if their offering a mobile component does in fact increase business.
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