Converge Enterprise Preps MobileCRM Edition
San Francisco, Calif.-based Converge Enterprise, a provider of cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software for small and midsized businesses (SMBs), announced today that it is targeting the booming enterprise mobile device market with its upcoming mobileCRM offering.
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) company delivers Web-enabled access to automated lead management capabilities. Converge also includes marketing tools, including DRIP and email marketing, document management and point of sale integration. On the social media front, Converge supports Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
What it lacked, until now, was native support for mobile devices like the iPad.
“Converge Enterprise is created as an all-in-one platform for small businesses who can’t afford the high end legacy and Web-based applications. And, since mobility is critical for their business, launching the mobile application of our CRM became a necessity,” said Converge Enterprise’s CEO, Manash Chaudhuri, in a statement.
Citing a forecast from Gartner, the company argues that the CRM software market is decidedly headed in a mobile direction. The research firm predicts that the CRM mobile application market will experience a 500 percent growth rate in 2014.
Driving that growth is outsized demand for mobile CRM. ISF, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) specialist, and market research group IDC earlier this year released a report on the most wanted mobile apps. CRM took the top spot, beating out business intelligence and business process authorization and approvals apps, with 31 percent of the 450 C-suite executives surveyed giving CRM the nod.
Chaudhuri indicated that his company plans to serve this expanding market with mobile-optimized apps, not downsized versions of the Web interface. “We aren’t compacting our Web CRM to fit in the small screen of iPhones and smartphones but building a mobile app that will work and function according to your device,” he said.
With this move, Converge Enterprise enters an increasingly crowded mobile CRM market. It is served by tech giants like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce in addition to startups like Hive and Kpi.com.
Currently, Converge Enterprise’s mobileCRM edition is in “the implementation and testing phase,” reports the company.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Enterprise Apps Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
