India’s mobile workforce is slated to grow by an overwhelming 53% in the next four years, despite the fact that enterprise adoption of mobility strategies is still at an infantile stage.

The Springboard Research report states that “With today’s consumers becoming increasingly mobile and well informed, enterprises must follow suit. A mobile enterprise can experience a range of business benefits including operational efficiency and enhanced customer interaction and engagement. The resulting upside in productivity, revenue and market share cannot be ignored by Indian CXOs.”

“We are in the post-PC era where the most important apps are being developed on mobile platforms first. Sales, customer service, marketing, finance, HR – teams need access to real time information to meet the demands of today’s business environment,” said Steve McWhirter, SVP, Enterprise Sales,salesforce.com, Asia Pacific. “Salesforce Mobile and Chatter Mobile keep customers connected to people, data, records, and dashboards -- straight from today’s most popular mobile devices including the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, and Android.”

The new report titled, ‘Moving Towards a Mobile Enterprise – Journey of India Inc.’ suggests a four-phased roadmap for companies embarking on a mobile enterprise strategy.

1. Conventional Mobility: basic apps such as e-mail, messaging, contacts, and calendar.

2. Automated Workforce: critical apps like ERP, CRM and salesforce automation. This allows mobile workers to minimize paperwork, reduce back-to-office visits, improve productivity, and achieve higher sales closing ratio.

3. Always Connected: apps that extend real-time communication and collaboration capabilities to employees anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

4. Pervasive Mobility: apps that integrate function-specific applications to enhance brand image and bring efficiencies in internal operations such as finance and human resources.

“Today's new environment is characterized by social media, smart devices and instant conversations. This changed backdrop demands that we have access to real time data to seize business opportunities on-the-go. Salesforce Mobile offers us that flexibility,” said Narasimha Subrahmanian, Managing Director, Essae Technologys Pvt. Ltd. “Our field sales and service executives access customer data, record daily activities, enter new leads, opportunities, service logs and access the accounts/contacts database from anywhere using Salesforce Mobile enabled Blackberrys. We are able to respond to any situation effectively as updates on team activities, dashboards and customer insights are available on finger tips, ultimately strengthening our relationship with customers.”