John Appleby, a senior VP and managing director of Salesforce.com EMEA, told ComputerWire in August 2002 that small devices such as PDAs could not offer the full Saleforce.com user interface, a factor that had long been one of the primary attractions and selling points of its tools.
But demand has clearly changed that opinion. A recent survey by Hayward, California-based AvantGo cited in the announcement found that 83% of sales representatives believed that a PDA sales product would make them more productive in the field, with 90% saying they would use their CRM/SFA system more if they had handheld mobile access.
At the time of Appleby’s comments, Salesforce.com’s mobile strategy was focused on notebooks, bolstered by the May 2002 launch of Salesforce.com Offline Edition, a novel XML and Microsoft .NET-based version of its software – in effect a fully functional but small-footprint application designed for disconnected use, synchronizing with back-end systems when network access becomes available – that relied on the presence on Internet Explorer on the host machine.
As a relatively thin client application, Saleforce.com’s offering appeared extremely well suited for deployment on PDAs, a factor that it now appears to have acknowledged. However, Salesforce.com will have had to compromise on its interface for AvantGo to accommodate its application as one of its My AvantGo mobile content channels, which use a fairly basic text format with a few graphics.
Source: Computerwire
