When CRM met mobile: Will the vendors get it together in time?

Whatever you hear about live football highlights, making those expensive 3G mobile networks pay will be about delivering applications to business customers.

It's business applications that will really do the trick and high-value systems like CRM and supply chain automation will take the lion's share.

Datamonitor estimates that the market will grow from today's $70m figure to $1.3bn in 2005, and Ovum reckons the whole wireless business market will be worth £29bn, much of which will be made up of CRM.

CRM refers to a multitude of sins, some of which are viable on the road and some of which aren't. Call centre operators are generally rooted to their desks, while travelling salesmen are mobile most of the time.

Some mobile CRM applications are already in the market, but they are merely an advance guard. Siebel Systems, for example, has addressed two key markets very directly - field service and field sales.

Field-service technicians typically require low volumes of information to be sent to them. A gas meter reader, for example, might need to know nothing more than the address of the next place to go, and be notified occasionally if an appointment is cancelled.

This can be done easily with the simple technologies like SMS or even the much-maligned WAP. A call centre, running Siebel scheduling software, takes calls from customers and decides who goes where to complete which job. The men in vans then get instructions via SMS. Simple information, like delay information, spare part orders or meter readings can then be SMSed or WAPed back.

Fine if you're field technicians fixing boilers. The real battle comes with the more specialised and information-rich parts of the CRM basket, like field sales.

Here, Siebel's offering seems less sensible. Their approach is to take a laptop computer and load onto it the same client software a desktop user would use. Rather than running over a wireless network, Siebel advocates upload the relevant data from a fixed internet link every morning.

The underpinning philosophy of Siebel's approach is simple, as director of wireless products Brian Stone explains: "It's the applications that are important, and the technologies which underlie this are only enablers."

In a way, this is obviously true, and in another way, it underestimates what is possible. No one should be deploying applications on wireless networks just for the sake of it, but they should not make the mistake of thinking that they can just stick a mobile link into an existing application and stop there.

Neil Ward-Dutton of Ovum explains: "Wireless is not just an extension of the internet. To get the best out of a mobile application, it needs to be rethought from the ground upwards. It's not just a case of taking a screen, ripping it out and whacking it onto a mobile device."

Using an application in a mobilised environment obviously establishes a very different set of requirements. The look and feel of an application becomes less important, but efficient programming and low memory and processing power needs are essential.

Likewise, having a volume of information at hand is not important, while timeliness and accessibility of information become a priority - these things are not the strong points of most desktop CRM vendors.

Mobile networks also offer some unique features, and will offer more as they progress. Location sensing is the most obvious one, but opportunities also exist to link in to the security, payment, verification, provisioning and messaging protocols that networks have built and are continuing to build.

One of the problems Ward-Dutton sees is the lack of collaborative thought between mobile operators and CRM providers. Partnerships between mobile phone companies and CRM vendors would be a logical first step to the delivery of a compelling mobile CRM application, but such partnerships are thin on the ground.

Siebel, for example, already has a partnership with four US mobile networks, Sprint PCS, AT&T Wireless, and Cingular Wireless, but there is not much sign of any actual co-operation on developing applications. It was recently revealed through silicon.com that Siebel is about to announce some deals with unspecified European mobile operators but is this a real co-operation, or just window-dressing?

It's difficult to tell for the moment, but Ovum for one is sceptical about whether business application vendors and mobile companies really are working together. A recent white paper co-authored by Dutton-Hall and others argues that: "Suppliers are now starting to pay lip service to the notion of converged solutions, but many of them still mistrust this fundamental industry convergence at a deep cultural level."

"Consequently they fail to implement truly valuable business models and offerings, even while they publicly talk up their ambitious strategies," it continues.

One company which does appear to have understood the need for co-operation with operators Microsoft. A deal announced in June allows Vodafone UK's corporate customers to use Microsoft's Outlook applications on their mobile phones.

It has the obvious advantage over similar offerings that it bears the Outlook brand, but it also bundles in access to a number of other Microsoft services, with more certain to be added before long. The most important of current services is integration with Microsoft Mobile Information server, but instant messaging, remote application hosting and user authentication are likely to follow.

The first steps of the journey to bring CRM to mobiles are being fought now, and they are likely to more or less be over by the time 3G becomes widely adopted. GPRS networks, which have been around for more than a year, will be the proving ground, and 3G will merely improve the applications that develop in that environment.

CRM software vendors should be looking now to partnering with mobile operators quickly, and work on using mobile networks intelligently, or face being left out in the cold.