A report from the Gartner analyst firm (http://www.gartner.com) has found that prospecting, account management and configure, price, quote (CPQ) processes will benefit from enterprise investment in the iPad.
This June 2011 report by Michael Dunne, and analyst at Gartner, entitled “iPads: Their Impact on the Top Six Sales Processes,” evaluates the growing usage of the Apple iPad, and its effect on sales processes, with CPQ ranking third most likely to provide high impact benefits.
“Mobility innovations will resonate with field sales forces that have to capture requirements, position products, assemble deals, generate proposals and quotes, and modify deals over the course of negotiations,” says Dunne. “More promising use cases involve sales teams working on proposals while on the road and in home offices to assemble deals for simple services, as well as for ship-to-order and simpler assemble-to-order (i.e. limited variation of components) solutions.”
Cameleon Software, which specializes in “next generation” product configurator, quotes, proposals (CPQ) and eCommerce software, provides a mobile configurator natively built for the iPad; it’s available in the Apple App Store. It’s integrated with Force.com, salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud computing platform. The app can be used “as is” or can integrate with the Salesforce CRM, and work in real-time to help companies configure their products and services.