Gen Y's Impact Felt Through Hosted CRM and Smartphones

If you see fewer sales professionals unboxing their laptops in airport security lines, you're not alone. Thanks to hosted CRM applications and a new wave of sophisticated smartphones, more field agents prefer to leave their laptops at the office. The shift has a little to do with technology and a lot to do with the changing demographic of the mobile workforce.

For the past ten to fifteen years, the most serious sales professionals hit the road with ThinkPads and other business laptops. In addition to PowerPoint slides and sales projections, those portable computers often contained sophisticated desktop CRM applications. Long before Wi-Fi became ubiquitous, sales professionals would keep notes and add new customers on their laptops, synchronizing information with the rest of their office by connecting devices to servers upon their return.

However, tales of lost and damaged laptops pervade the IT service space. Without wireless backup, desktop CRM applications are still at the mercy of dropped hard drives, cracked screens, and misplaced laptop bags. Hosted CRM systems solved the problems of lost data after a laptop failure, but replacing equipment can put a strain on company budgets during tight economic times.

Enter the smartphone. Though hard-core IT junkies note that today's fastest smartphone processors only rival laptop chips from a few years ago, today's phones have just enough power to handle many hosted CRM applications. Furthermore, as Generation Y workers join companies in droves, a new wave of sales professionals already comfortable with sleek phones sees no problems using them for CRM as well as for calls and texting.

This shift is good news for CIOs, who have discovered that they can replace many of their field laptops with less expensive and more durable smartphones. Many carriers subsidize the cost of new smartphones, making them even more appealing. Their learning curve tends to be offset by the convenience of having one less bulky item to carry in the field.

Granted, some CRM systems still don't play nice with all smartphones. Internal company systems often fare far worse than hosted CRM applications, since they require middleware or server licenses that can negate other cost savings. Nonetheless, with more companies adopting hosted CRM applications, the transition to smartphone-based CRM should do great things for company budgets, not to mention sales professionals' shoulders.