Microsoft Dynamics CRM for iPhone Now Available
by Yves Neidlinger on 04/04/09 at 7:33 pm
Yves Neidlinger is a technologist and a social media and marketing consultant. He is the National Channel Manager for Navara and the founder and Editor in Chief of iPhoneCTO.
Software developers are increasingly recognizing that iPhone has a place in the enterprise. With more than 17 million iPhones sold under two years, many are rushing to develop iPhone applications to meet the demand for mobile access to mission critical applications.
Today comes word that Numenes, a Dutch software development firm, has announced the release of IDcrm, an iPhone application delivering online and offline access for Microsoft CRM.
Sales representatives and sales managers can take their customer contacts, sales opportunities and pending activities with them without being tethered to a desktop. IDcrm also features the ability to synchronize data to customer specific CRM implementations which is useful considering most clients will have unique integrations in place.
A larger question is whether point solutions like these have already been made obsolete by companies that provide frameworks for mobilizing enterprise application. Companies like Navara, also a Dutch software developer, offer a middleware solution that can easily mobilize any application onto a variety of mobile devices with real-time wireless synchronization and the ability to customize the client application to meet each customer’s unique needs.
It will be interesting to see which way businesses will go, with proprietary applications like IDcrm, or middleware providers like Navara which require some up front effort, but provide much more flexibility and ease of customization on the client side.
